Monthly Archives: January 2013

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Daily Express, 31 January 1913, 5

The Daily Express and the Standard both carry articles today trying to make sense of the phantom airship sightings, each framed very differently. The article in the Express begins by asking (p. 5; above):

Is a German airship making flights by night over England? That is a question which is being asked by many people in view of the repeated reports of a mysterious night aircraft from various parts of the country.

And it closes by noting:

The Hansa can travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and has a range of 1,000 miles. It is about 500 miles in a straight line from Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, where the Zeppelins are kept as a rule, but there are airship garages further north in Germany, and the German coast is less than 500 miles from Manchester.

By contrast, the Standard opens with a less leading question (p. 7):

What is the mysterious air craft that has been seen half a dozen times at as many different points, hovering by night over English towns, during the past three weeks? Whence does it come, and where does it hide itself during the day?

It also is rather dismissive of the idea that the airships are German:

The somewhat alarming theory that it is a foreign airship is generally discounted. For a craft of this description to have made a voyage lasting three weeks without landing and being observed is held to be a sheer impossibility, while it is considered almost equally impossible that half a dozen separate visits, including all the places at which the the mysterious vessel has been reported, should have been made from abroad.

Another difference is that in the Standard's article, those who have 'generally discounted' the foreign airship theory are certain 'military and naval authorities', whereas the Express seems to be talking more about public opinion. Nevertheless, the Standard does admit that the mystery is 'greatly exercising the minds' of those authorities, and that 'In official and aeronautical quarters nothing is known -- or at all events nothing is admitted -- of the identity of the elusive airship'. It does offer an alternative to the German theory:

The suggestion is made that it belongs to an unknown inventor who has secretly built a new type of craft and is adopting this unusual method of stimulating interest in his invention as a preliminary to offering it to the War Office. Another theory is that it is not one airship, but two or more, which would account for its being seen at places as far apart as Liverpool and Aberystwyth within the same hour on Saturday evening last. As the crow flies it is some eighty miles between these two places, and it is in the highest degree improbable that an airship is in existence in this country capable of travelling this distance in an hour.

The suggestion that the airship is the invention of a local inventor was made (implicitly, at least) last week by the Manchester Guardian, but has not attracted much support until now.
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[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.]

I recently came across what appear to be two bad books from what are two good publishers. There's nothing particularly unusual about that -- these things happen, a lot of books get published on military history and they can't all be good. But it turns out that the author of these books is even more questionable than the content. I worry that, having got this far and established a track record, he will be able keep convincing publishers to look favourably upon his work.

The author in question is Frank Joseph, and the books are Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy's Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45 (Helion & Company, 2010) and The Axis Air Forces: Flying in Support of the German Luftwaffe (Praeger, 2011) -- the publisher's pages can be found here and here. I must admit to not having read them, so this is not a review. But enough is available on Google Books, here and here, to cast serious doubts upon Joseph's reliability, and these doubts are amply confirmed by reviews available elsewhere, for example by Richard Carrier in Global War Studies. I'll focus on Mussolini's War, though The Axis Air Forces appears to be pretty bad too -- I'll just mention here the blunt, unsupported claim from that an American experimental VTOL aircraft of the 1950s, the Convair XFY, 'had been built from Campini's original plans' (p. 31) for the Caproni Campini Ca.183bis, a planned 'futuristic Italian interceptor' with 'a highly innovative vertical takeoff and landing design' (p. 30). The only trouble is that, as far as I can tell, the XFY owed nothing to any Italian aircraft (though it did to a German one, the unbuilt Focke-Wulf Triebflügel), and the Ca.183bis was not a VTOL design at all, but a high-altitude interceptor of relatively conventional configuration (albeit with a Campini compressor, making it a crude jet). The only somewhat unusual feature they had in common seems to have been contra-rotating propellers, but they weren't actually all that rare. But on to Mussolini's War.
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Daily Express, 30 January 1913, 1

A new mystery airship report today, from a new part of the country -- 'the coast of Mid Wales' (Daily Express, p. 1; above):

An 'Express' correspondent at Aberystwyth states that it was seen by country people approaching the village of Chancery, a few miles south of Aberystwyth, at 8.25 on Saturday night [25 January 1913].

The movements of the airship were witnessed by a number of the villagers. At first it was headed for Cardigan Bay, but its searchlights, which swept the hills, evidently revealed the nearness of the sea, for it turned south and left in the direction of Carmarthenshire.

The Times carries the same report -- well, barring the reference to the Express (p. 12). The Express, however, also reveals its exasperation at the difficulty in reconciling the increasingly widespread phantom airship sightings to date (p. 1):

This is at least the fifth time this month that the mystery airship has been seen flying by night, yet no one has seen it rise or descend, and no one knows whence it comes or whither it goes:

On Tuesday the 'Express' reported that five persons declared they had seen it going over Liverpool 'between seven and half-past eight' on Saturday night last [25 January 1913]. Yet at 8.25 it was seen near Aberystwyth!

Exclamation mark! The Express doesn't try to explain how the airship could be seen at two places at the same time, but logically the choices boil down to: (1) there are two airships, or maybe more; (2) there is one airship, or maybe none. It summarises the previous sightings:

Dover, Jaunary [sic] 4.
Yarmouth, January 15.
Bristol Channel and Cardiff, January 18 [should be January 17].
Yarmouth, January 23.

And points out that like the airship or airships recently seen at Liverpool and near Aberystwyth, the ones reported at Dover and at Cardiff 'carried a light or lights'.
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Standard, 28 January 1913, 9

A somewhat atypical phantom airship report appears in today's newspapers. It's from the suburbs of one of the great cities, Liverpool. With a population of around three quarters of a million, Liverpool is more than three times the size of the biggest city to have previously reported a mystery aircraft, Cardiff. According to the Standard, (p. 9; above):

Several people report having seen a mysterious aircraft over the north of Liverpool on Saturday evening [25 January 1913] between seven and half-past eight o'clock. They say it was travelling at about 25 miles an hour, and that it carried a very brilliant light. Two members of the Liverpool Aviation School were out on Saturday afternoon, but did not leave the neighbourhood of the shore at Waterloo, and were not in the air at the time stated.

The Times has an equally brief account (p. 13), but it does provide some additional details: the report was made by 'A resident in the Clubmoor district', and 'There were five persons in the house at the time and they watched it for some time'. The Manchester Guardian says much the same (p. 6). Frustratingly, the local Liverpool Echo appears to carry no news article about the Clubmoor aircraft today, even though it does mention it in the leading article (p. 4):

If rumour speaks true, England has already once, if not twice, been invaded by mysterious ships of the air that pass in the night.

Mention is made of a mysterious aircraft which passed over this district after dark on Saturday evening last.

The leading article itself is entitled 'Air power and sea power', and criticises the government for lagging in its efforts to build a British air fleet. It suggests that an airship scare might be just the thing: 'The scaremongers who have so often aired their fears and grievances in regard to the Navy might be pardoned a little activity directed into another and more needful channel'. Why more needful?

Germany has been left an easy first in possession of the huge dirigible airship, a craft which can cover vast distances in a short space of time, carrying sufficient implements of destruction to work considerable havoc on any particular point attacked. Naval and military experts have all these facts before them, and they can calculate how much of the threatened danger is real and how much only fancied. The public at home are none the less left with an uncomfortable feeling on every fresh announcement of a new move by some foreign Power for the strengthening of its aerial squadrons.

And, of course, 'The British fleet of dirigibles has practically no existence', the Admiralty preferring to rely on 'the hydroplane, whose range of operations is necessarily limited and which has but a small carrying capacity'. What is lacking 'to better secure our air power' is not 'volunteers of nerve and ability' but 'the necessary mechanical equipment'.
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Daily Express, 27 January 1913

The Daily Express reports (p. 7, above) on another mystery airship at Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast -- this time it was seen rather than heard:

Samuel Harris, who is employed at the corporation pumping station at the north end of town, states that a few minutes before midnight on Thursday [23 January 1913] he saw a long airship, with a cradle attached, travelling at a considerable height.

He states that it passed over his house and proceeded in a south-easterly direction over the sea. He estimates that it was travelling at between forty and fifty miles an hour, and is perfectly convinced that it was an airship.

Harris called his daughter out to see it, and she 'caught a glimpse of it as it was passing out of sight'.

The Express also notes that 'There are some incredulous people' (where? in Yarmouth?) 'who are loth to believe the stories of mysterious night airships'. Their explanation:

the noise which has been taken for that of the motor has really been caused by flocks of wild geese passing over Yarmouth.

Well, then.

Norfolk News, 25 January 1913, 10

The Norfolk News, Eastern Counties Journal, and Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lynn Commercial Gazette, presumably universally known as the Norfolk News, today carries the usual paragraph about the Cardiff airship sighting. Unsurprisingly, it pays considerably more attention to the mystery aircraft heard locally at Yarmouth at midnight last week (above, p. 10). It reproduces Herbert Pertwee's letter to the rival Eastern Daily Press:

On Tuesday, January 14th, about midnight, I distinctly heard an aeroplane or airship pass over my house at a tremendous speed, and within three or four minutes after I heard it again, probably returning. I should like to know if anyone else heard it. Early on the previous Monday morning Mr. Walter Back heard one over Southtown. What are the Germans up to?

Note that the previous report had given the date as 15 January, not 14 January, but this discrepancy is easily explained by the time being midnight. Pertwee was interviewed by a representative of the press (what part of the press is not specified, so probably the Daily Press):

he noticed that the aeroplane had a very high-toned hum. There was no sound earthward at the time, all of it coming from above. The sound came towards him, passed away, and then returned, the airship apparently travelling at a very great speed. It was between midnight and 1 a.m. when he heard it over his house. His partner, Mr. Back, had mentioned to his son hearing a similar sound on the previous Monday morning [13 January 1913] before he met Mr. Pertwee. Mr. Back heard the sound between 2 and 3 a.m., and thought it might have come from a hydroplane. If it was anything of the sort Mr. Pertwee thinks it must have come from a considerable distance, otherwise if it had been in this district something must have been known of its movements.

The Norfolk News notes that after Pertwee's letter appeared in the Daily Press, 'several residents' have told its Yarmouth correspondent that 'they heard what they took to be an aeroplane pass over Yarmouth at about Tuesday midnight (14th instant)'. But it doesn't quote or name any of these other witnesses, instead reprinting another letter evidently from the Daily Press, written by 'Mr. F. W. Boulton, 20, Gordon Road, Southtown' relating to an incident a couple of months ago (so a few weeks after the Sheerness airship but maybe around the time it reached the press):

I was greatly interested on reading your report in this morning's issue of a supposed airship or aeroplane passing over Yarmouth, about the middle of November last [1912] I heard what I took to be an airship pass over Southtown. The time was about half an hour after midnight, and both my wife and myself distinctly heard a loud whirring, humming noise, which gradually diminished as though receding into the distance. As the time was about the middle of our herring fishing, it struck me on second thoughts that the noises might have come from a vessel in the harbour, although it appeared to be overhead, and became fainter and fainter as if getting further and further away. As I found nobody else seemed to have noticed the incident, after a bit I dismissed it from my mind, only to have it brought back afresh by reading Mr. Pertwee's communication in this morning's paper.

Both Pertwee and Boulton have used their local knowledge and contacts to assess what they heard. Pertwee seems to have inquired about local aircraft flights, or perhaps just assumed he would have heard of any. He and his business partner shared their experiences, and Pertwee took the initiative to write to a newspaper and ask if anyone else heard it as well. Clearly the sound, whatever it was, became the subject of gossip and rumour, with a number of people telling a reporter from another paper they had heard it too. Boulton also asked around, but finding that he and his wife were the only ones to notice anything decided not to worry about it. His thought that the sound might come from a herring trawler is reminiscent of the Dover Express's explanation for the Dover airship, though presumably it would be quite a familiar sound in a fishing port. None of the witnesses suggest that they have any familiarity with aircraft, but they seem reasonably confident in their ability to identify one by its sound -- well, it came from above, so what else could it be? Since Pertwee has inferred that the aircraft was not a local one, and given that it was flying in the middle of the night, to conclude that it was a German airship might be reasonable, though not a German aeroplane as he apparently has done. It's curious that none of the witnesses seem to have rushed outside to see if anything was visible, but perhaps the lateness of the hour explains that.

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Only recycled news today: the Yeovil Western Gazette, p. 2, and the Cambridge Independent Press, p. 5, reprint the paragraph about the Cardiff airship which circulated widely on Tuesday, while the Exeter Western Times, p. 11, reprints its own article on the Bristol lights from yesterday.

The Standard has a follow-up to the letter about lights in India it published over a week ago. A correspondence seems to have developed. Lewis Rice of Harrow writes in response to a Colonel Tillard's account (unseen) of 'the Nundy lights', 'the lights which are seen from the fine old fortress of Nundydroog in the Mysore State', p. 13:

After the first heavy fall of rain in the storms which precede the burst of the monsoon, these lights appear in the plains below, often stretching out in long lines like the street lamps of a city. The superstitious call them 'corpse candles' and other names. But they can be accounted for in a very matter-of-fact way.

Rice explains that the lights appear during the mating (or 'pairing') season of a species of termite, though these are not their direct cause. Rather it seems that the termites are a local delicacy, and it's the method used to trap them which is the explanation:

The lower orders of the villagers are not behindhand in their appreciation of the delicate morsels, and, in order to gratify their taste, form shallow basins of the earth round the white ant nests, in which they fix a branch of inferior sugar-cane and set it alight. The insects, allured by the light, fall in shoals into the basins, where they are retained by a sort of hencoop. In the morning the fragrant heaps are gathered up and roasted, to be eaten as curry. Such is the explanation of the Nundy lights.

Perhaps, though termite traps are probably not the solution to the present British airship mystery.

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Manchester Guardian, 23 January 1913, 12

Not a lot of new scareship news today. The Cardiff airship seen last Friday remains the principal focus. The Dundee Evening News reprints, p. 5, the same article about further witnesses carried by a number of newspapers yesterday, so that's nothing new. The Manchester Guardian says, p. 12 (above) that 'the noise of its propellers has been heard at night in several districts', which is new, but no details are provided.

Of greater interest are the interviews which 'Mr. E. T. Willows, the well-known Cardiff airman' has been giving to the press, or at least to representatives of the Guardian and the Standard, suggesting that 'the "long, oval shape" referred to by one or two observers suggests that it may have been a dirigible balloon'. The way in which these interviews are framed is quite revealing. The Guardian is a Radical paper and so congenitally predisposed to scepticism about talk of spies and invasions. As well, it is broadly in political sympathy with the Liberal government now in power and therefore disinclined to support any charge that it is failing in its duty to defend the nation. Conversely the Standard is robustly Conservative in its views and regularly runs articles about this or that foreign menace (a word which the Guardian is apt to put in scare quotes). Just today it has the fourth in a series of articles on 'The Navy and the nation' attacking Churchill's naval policy, along with a supporting leading article.
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Standard, 22 January 1913, 9

Captain Lindsay's appeal for other witnesses to the airship he saw at Cardiff has not been in vain. A number of newspapers today print the same brief paragraph noting the existence of 'other eye-witnesses' (not named) -- the syndicalist Daily Herald, p. 7; Dundee Courier, p. 6; Liverpool Echo, p. 5; Manchester Courier, p. 10; and Standard, p. 9 (above); while The Times, p. 10, has an even more abbreviated version -- which adds:

After leaving Cardiff the course of the airship was altered from due west to north-west. It is said to have carried a light and travelled so fast that when one observer ran to a telephone the airship had almost disappeared.

Fortunately, the Globe provides some more substantial details (p. 5):

Mr. Stephen Morgan, of Merthyr, states that he saw 'something resembling an airship' about 6 p.m. on Friday [17 January 1913], that it carried a light, and that it left a column of smoke in its wake.

Mr. E. Morgan, of Roath, Cardiff, states that when he saw the ship the light was too dim to see its lines clearly, but that it appeared to be 'oval-shaped.'

In addition, 'It is declared' (by whom?) 'that a fortnight ago an airship was seen at night over Barry Dock'.

The Globe also reports two new mystery aircraft sightings (or hearings):

The 'Eastern Daily Press' publishes a statement by Mr. Herbert A. Pertwee, of 104, North Denes-road, Yarmouth, that between midnight and 1 a.m. on January 15 he heard an airship or aeroplane pass over his house, return, then fade away. The Wolverhampton 'Express and Star' states that several people at Hednesford saw an airship bearing a light at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday last [19 January 1913].

Yarmouth is on the Norfolk coast, facing Germany across the North Sea; but Hednesford is in Staffordshire in deepest England, the first report to come from inland.
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Standard, 21 January 1913, p. 9

Press coverage of the phantom airships has so far been somewhat scattershot, with articles in only two or three newspapers on any given day. Today, however, at least eight newspapers report on an airship seen at Cardiff, five of them London dailies (all politically conservative, as it happens) -- though admittedly it is not given much attention. The Daily Express (p. 5), Liverpool Echo (p. 5), Manchester Courier (p. 7) and The Times (p. 10) have only a short paragraph or two, while the Globe and Traveller (p. 6), Daily Mail (p. 9) and the Dundee Evening Telegraph and Post (p. 4) provide a bit more information. The longest account is in the Standard (p. 9, above).

The reason for the interest appears to be the quality of the witness, Captain Lionel Lindsay, the Chief Constable of Glamorganshire and hence the senior policeman for the area of South Wales bounded more or less by Cardiff, Swansea and Merthyr (he most recently attracted national attention for his role in the Tonypandy Riots). In his own words (said 'in an interview', according to the Standard):

At a quarter to five on Friday [17 January 1913] evening last I noted the object in the air. It was then dusk and rather foggy, so that one could not define it. It was much bigger and moved faster than the Willows airship, and it left in its trail a dense volume of smoke. I called the attention of a bystander to the object, and he agreed with me that it was some large aircraft. It disappeared quickly, thus giving evidence of speedy movement, and it was taking a direction as if making for Swansea. I have failed to meet with anyone else who saw it, and am anxious to solve what appears to me something like a mystery.

Compared with the previous scareship reports, the smoke trail is a novel feature, and this one seems unusually fast too. For some reason most of the newspapers insist that Lindsay was 'the sole witness', but by his account there was at least one other (though perhaps he cannot be found now). Some add that he has 'notified the public that he will be obliged if [other] observers [...] will communicate with him' (Daily Mail, p. 9) 'at the constabulary office' (Evening Telegraph, p. 4), which could mean that he is making the mystery airship the official business of the Glamorganshire Constabulary. The Evening Telegraph hints that there might be more sightings from the Cardiff area, saying that 'It is reported on reputable authority [presumably Lindsay's] that a mysterious airship is making periodical visits to Glamorgan'. But the Standard, the only paper to explicitly mention other scareship sightings, mentions only the Dover and Bristol Channel ones. As Dinas Powis is also in Glamorganshire, perhaps that explains the 'periodical', though not the certainty of the 'reputable authority'.