Monthly Archives: August 2009

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[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

A couple of interesting posts at The Russian Front suggest that the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 should be thought of as a World War Zero, or alternatively that the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 should be. It's often useful to play around with the names we give to historical events and phenomena, because it reminds us that they are just names. And this is an old game for historians (as Dave Stone notes) -- the Seven Years' War is sometimes considered to be the first world war (if not the First World War). But I'm not sure in what sense the Russo-Japanese and Russo-Turkish wars qualify as world wars. Shouldn't the primary determinant of this be that they were fought on a world scale? Even the epic, doomed voyage of the Baltic fleet to Tsushima isn't enough to make the Russo-Japanese War a world war, as all the actual fighting was localised to a relatively small region in Manchuria (if you set aside a few potshots at British trawlers).

But in his post, John Steinberg does give a list of reasons for his argument regarding the Russo-Japanese War (which comes out of research for a two-volume work he co-edited entitled The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero). It seems to me that most of them are not actually about geographical extent but rather other sorts of scale -- of battles, of casualties, of finance, and so on. That is, in Steinberg's formulation the Russo-Japanese War sounds something like an approach towards total war, not a world war. If that's the case then I find this statement surprising:

As for the concept of World War Zero, most western military historians continue to view the Russo-Japanese War as a regional conflict rooted in the age of imperialism. Historians in Asia, appear much more respective.

I thought the Russo-Japanese War was well-known among western military historians (if not among contemporary western military staffs) for its bloodiness. Hew Strachan, for example, refers to it quite often (well, on 30 pages out of 1139) in volume I of The First World War. It's also a common element in diplomatic histories of the war's origins, for Russia's defeat had a tremendous impact on the strategic calculations of all the other Great Powers. So it seems to me that western historians are quite comfortable in seeing the Russo-Japanese War as a step along the road to total war and/or to the First World War in several respects. I think I must be missing something here.

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... is a new blog written by Jakob, a frequent commenter around these parts. He's just finishing up a Master's on engine development at the interwar RAE, and then will roll into a PhD on Metrovicks and the gas turbine. This is pleasing for a number of reasons, not least because I've finally got enough blogs to make up an aviation section my sidebar. So go over and give Thrust Vector a recce!

And, speaking of ending Master's degrees and beginning PhDs, I would be remiss in not mentioning Ross Mahoney, who has handed in his MPhil on air support for the Dieppe raid and will be moving on to doing a PhD on the career of Leigh-Mallory. Well done, Ross!

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On 22 August 1849, the Republic of San Marco surrendered to Austria. The Republic was formed after a revolt in Venice against Austrian rule in March 1848. The Austrians eventually besieged Venice, leading to starvation and outbreaks of cholera in the city. During this siege, they launched the first air raids in history, by unmanned balloons which floated over Venice carrying bombs. The British press didn't take any notice of this at the time, but the following account appeared in the Morning Chronicle a week after the surrender:

The Soldaten Freund publishes a letter from the artillery officer Uchatius, who first proposed to subdue Venice by ballooning. From this it appears that the operations were suspended for want of a proper vessel exclusively adapted for this mode of warfare, as it became evident, after a few experiments had been made, that, as the wind blows nine times out of ten from the sea, the balloon inflation must be conducted on board ship; and this was the case on July the 15th, the occasion alluded to in a former letter, when two balloons armed with shrapnels ascended from the deck of the Volcano war steamer, and attained a distance of 3,500 fathoms in the direction of Venice; and exactly at the moment calculated upon, i. e., at the expiration of twenty-three minutes, the explosion took place. The captain of the English brig Frolic, and other persons then at Venice, testify to the extreme terror and the morale effect produced on the inhabitants.

A stop was put to further exhibitions of this kind by the necessity of the Vulcan going into docks to undergo repairs, which the writer regrets the more, as the currents of wind were for a long time favourable to his schemes. One thing is established beyond all doubt (he adds), viz., that bombs and other projectiles can be thrown from balloons at a distance of 5,000 fathoms, always provided the wind be favourable. 1

Some comments. It's hard to find reliable information on these attacks. The best account I've seen is by Lee Kennett and he's not sure how many balloons were released, saying that the largest number he has seen is two hundred.2 This doesn't fit well with the Morning Chronicle article, which seems to suggest that only two balloon bombs were ever launched. This is supposedly based on a letter written by the inventor of the balloon bombs, Franz von Uchatius, so if it's accurate should be preferred over secondary sources.3

But whether the number was two or two hundred, it doesn't seem like the balloon bombs had much effect on the course of the siege, which went on for another five weeks -- despite the reference made in the Morning Chronicle to 'the extreme terror and the morale effect produced on the inhabitants'. That was clearly what was intended, as the bombs were released (or maybe detonated) by a timer, and couldn't possibly hit specified targets from a balloon drifting above the city.4 More importantly, the bombs used were filled with shrapnel, which isn't much use for anything but killing and maiming people. So there were few qualms on the part of the Austrians about targeting and killing civilians. Which they went on to do with presumably much greater efficiency when they later bombarded the city with more conventional artillery, averaging a thousand shells a day.5

Finally, the air raids of 1849 seem to have had as little impact on the wider world (at least the English-speaking part of it) as they did on Venice. As noted above, there was very little notice taken in the British press, and I've come across only one meager reference to Venice in books published before 1914 (and that in a book translated from the German, written by the German military balloonist Hermann Moedebeck). So it doesn't seem like they inspired anyone to find a better way to bomb cities from the air; that was an idea which had to be invented all over again. Which it was, of course, and Venice's next air raid was on 24 May 1915.

  1. Morning Chronicle, 29 August 1849, 5. [↩]
  2. Lee Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982), 6. [↩]
  3. Kennett does state that two bombs were used in the first armed test, but that this was carried out on 12 July, with another 'series' of tests on 15 July. [↩]
  4. Which is not to say they were just released at random; the balloon-bombardiers had to take windspeed into account when calculating how long to set the timer for, so that it would go off over Venice -- though the wind could then change direction after launch, of course. [↩]
  5. Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare, 1815-1914 (London: Routledge, 2001), 47. [↩]

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On this day in 1945, the third atomic bomb was dropped on Tokyo. Or, rather, might have been had not Japan surrendered on 15 August. For a long time, I've believed that the two bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only ones which would be available for a month or two. But a comment at Edge of the American West pointed me in the direction of a memo recording the conversation between General John E. Hull and Colonel L. E. Seeman on 13 August, about atomic bomb production in the next few months. And it turns out that there was one ready to be shipped out to Tinian at that very moment. According to Seeman, it would be ready for use on 19 August.

As for where it would be used, I got that from the first chapter of Michael Gordin's Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War. He says there that the third drop would 'probably' have been on Tokyo. That surprises me a little, given that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen from a list of cities spared from conventional bombing so that the effects of the atomic bombs could be better assessed. Tokyo wasn't on that list (the other cities were Kokura and Niigata). Perhaps the thinking was that two 'test' drops were enough, and that if no surrender followed, it was time for a higher-value morale target? It could be questioned how much of Tokyo was left to destroy after the 65 conventional (or fire) raids which had already taken place. Or perhaps a decapitating strike was intended, to take out Hirohito and his ministers? Though that might actually make surrender more difficult to organise.

Clearly I'll have to add Gordin's book to my to-read list ...

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The fire at Penyberth, in the Llŷn peninsula, is an important part of the history of the Welsh nationalist movement. In the early hours of 8 September 1936, three men, Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine and D. J. Williams, entered an aerodrome which was being built for the RAF as a bombing school and deliberately set fire to it. They then went to a nearby police station and just as deliberately turned themselves in. It was a political act: all three men were founding members of Plaid Cymru in 1925, and Lewis was then its president (with Valentine his predecessor). However, Plaid Cymru (as far as I can tell) had no direct involvement with the arson. A jury at Caernarfon failed to reach a verdict, and the case was moved to London (which act itself inflamed Welsh opinion), where the three men were sentenced to nine months' imprisonment.

Obviously what interests me here is the RAF bombing school (which, despite the arsonists' efforts, became operational in February 1937 as RAF Penrhos). Why set fire to a bombing school? Why in 1936? This was precisely the time when the RAF was starting to rearm, building up its bomber forces to fight the next war. Which of course was why the RAF needed a new bombing school, to train the airmen who would be flying those bombers. Was the fire a militant anti-militarist act, so to speak, the work of violent pacifists?1 Was that why they chose their target?

The short answer is no, as a little reading shows. Penyberth was claimed as a site of some cultural significance for Wales, though exactly what that was is unclear to me. Wikipedia says a farmhouse there had been 'home to generations of patrons of poets', which is sufficiently vague to warrant a [citation needed]. Lewis told the Caernarfon jury that

It was the terrible knowledge that the English Government's bombing range, once it was established in Lleyn, would endanger and in all likelihood destroy an essential focus of Welsh culture, the most aristocratic spiritual heritage of Wales, that made me think of my own career, the security even of my own family, things which must be sacrificed in order to prevent so appalling a calamity.

I hold that my action at Penrhos aerodrome on September 8 saved the honour of the University of Wales [where Lewis lectured], for the language and literature of Wales are the very raison d'être of this university.2

Kenneth O. Morgan says that 'there had been much local protest at the proposal to build this school, with the physical and cultural damage that would result to a traditional Welsh farming community'.3 That seems consistent enough with Lewis's statement. And fair enough: when Welsh nationalists undertake a political act, you'd expect to find Welsh nationalism as the underlying reason.
...continue reading →

  1. A contradiction in terms? Not always: consider the international air force championed at this time by another Welshman, David Davies. [↩]
  2. The Times, 14 October 1936, 11. See also the first draft of Lewis's speech. [↩]
  3. Kenneth O. Morgan, The Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880-1980 (Oxford and Cardiff: Oxford University Press/University of Wales Press, 1981), 254. [↩]

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A mix of things I missed and things which weren't there last time:

What else should be on my list?

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One quite inadequate response to the paywalling of bibliographies is to set up your own, which I've made a start at here. It's a little narrower in focus than the RHS bibliography, being limited to works relating to the history of British aviation up to 1941 which I looked at in the course of my PhD research. However, it also includes primary sources. I'm still pruning it -- there might be some things in there which don't have 'significant' aviation content, for example.

It's running on WIKINDX, a content management system specifically designed with bibliographies in mind. (Thanks to Alun for the tip!) It was pretty easy to set up; most of the work I did was playing around with the templates and CSS to make it look a bit like Airminded. As a LaTeX user I was pleased to find that I could import my bibTeX bibliography files fairly painlessly, but if I was working in the Endnote world WIKINDX can handle that too. Just as importantly, it can export bibliographies in both formats, along with RTF, RIS and HTML. There plenty of other bells and whistles, including an integrated word processor which I can't ever see myself using.

There are a few different ways to view the database. One is to just list all the resources (i.e. books or articles), sorted by creator (author) or year, perhaps. Another is to browse the creators, which is done via a combined heat map and cloud. Or there's a quick search and a ridiculously capable power search. It talks to Zotero, and there's an RSS feed for recently-added resources. And so on.

What is the point of this? Is it going to be actually useful to anyone? Should I keep control of it myself, or open it up to others to edit? Should I be using citeulike or Mendeley instead? I don't know! But I'm already thinking about putting up a future war fiction bibliography ...