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• Fear, uncertainty, doubt -- I

  22 May 2012 in 1910s, Archives, Australia, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics

  The title of this post could refer to my own state of mind as I reach a crossroads in this project. As I said in the previous post, it's time to dig deeper into the 1918 Australian mystery aeroplane scare, to look beneath the surface. What was really going on? Why did people see mystery [...]

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• Where again?

  19 May 2012 in 1910s, Australia, Maps, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Tools and methods

  View Mystery aircraft, Australia, 1918 in a larger map My next step in characterising the 1918 Australian mystery aircraft scare was to plot all the sightings Google Maps, which you can see above. I've used differently-coloured icons for different time periods to give an idea of the progression over the course of 1918: blue is [...]

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• Acquisitions

  18 May 2012 in Acquisitions, Books

  William Feaver. James Boswell: Unofficial War Artist. London: Muswell Press, 2007. A few months ago Ruth Boswell emailed me about the Sudeten crisis posts I wrote in connect with a film script and novel she is working on. It turns out that not only was she the producer of the classic 70s SF show The [...]

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• When, what, where?

  17 May 2012 in 1910s, Archives, Australia, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Plots

  In my previous post, I threatened more statistics about Australian mystery aircraft scares of the First World War, and here they are. What I've been doing is collating all the sightings recorded in two NAA files, MP1049/1, 1918/066 and MP367/1, 512/3/1319. The former is the Navy Office's file pertaining to 'Reports of suspicious aeroplanes, lights [...]

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• Planning 'Dreaming war'

  12 May 2012 in 1910s, Archives, Australia, Books, Conferences and talks, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics

  Like Gaul and probably some other things, my mystery aeroplanes paper will be divided into three parts: An overview of the 1918 Australian mystery aeroplane scare itself. The immediate historical context which helps explain the scare, namely the threats from German raiders and of Allied defeat. The bigger picture into which the scare fits, namely [...]

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