...hat chapter is as follows: "England – no longer an island Of all the political consequences of airship travel by far the most important is the XX of the insular character of the British Isles. England grew great as an island. The discovery of the sea route to India and the discovery of the Americas raised the importance of maritime trade immensely. Because of its insular position and its many excellent harbours, England has since 1600 achieved the...
...Guardians (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), 220-4. He found one sceptical witness who claimed they were due to the vapour trails so prominent in the sky that summer. Joyel Scaria I will give you another logical fallacy. The Bombing of Foggia in World War II took place on several occasions in 1943, by Allied aircraft. The bombing caused 20,298 civilian victims during nine air raids and is the worst casualty in Italy during the war. San Giovann...
...nationalism. Needs a sequel! Fernando Esposito. Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. A much-needed analysis of the relationship between fascism and aviation, in both Italy and Germany (perhaps with an emphasis on the former, which is about right). Add in 'mythical modernity' and I'm sold. David Hall. Worktown: The Astonishing Story of the 1930s Project that Launched Mass-Observation. London:...
...e was that of an Aeroplane passing'. Similarly, neither Ussing nor Harper seem to have thought that the light they each saw was anything to do with an aeroplane at the time; it seems that it was only 'after hearing what Mr Jenkins [sic] had said' that they came forward with their information (though Harper, at least, did think it sufficiently strange at the time to point out to her husband). So 'hearing/seeing an aeroplane' in this case was a soci...
...differing times) across much of the country. This was in fact only a false alarm, caused by an unscheduled civilian flight from France. But as far as civilians were concerned, this looked like precisely what they had been told to expect when the knock-out blow came: mass air raids simultaneous with the outbreak of war. So their reactions to the alarms give us a little insight into their fear of bombing at the end of the scaremongering 1930s. Mass-...
...on [sic], [...] Friday, 28 February 1913 [...] more likely to have a sceptical tone: the Dundee Evening Telegraph records that 'With regard to the Hull vision, a correspondent who has been making investigations is unable to find one responsible [...] Tuesday, 4 March 1913 [...] coastguards at Hornsea who saw an airship last Tuesday made their report to the Admiralty under this 'official order'. The [...] Mapping the 1913 phantom airship scare [......
...ful file is AIR 1/561/16/15/62, 'Several files containing reports of false alarms & rumoured Air Raids on England', covering the period from December 1914 to August 1918. This has information on about half a dozen seperate phantom airship incidents from January 1915, some involving multiple sightings and defence responses. So this is what's interesting for the period in question -- the dates in bold correspond clearly to incidents published in the...
...e the car was brought to a standstill.5 If this account verges on the farcical, that of Gordon's third trial that year (possibly written by the same journalist) is even more so, under the headline 'FOOTSCRAY "FLYING" MACHINE. A MIRTH PROVOKING INVENTION': Despite efforts to preserve the utmost secrecy, there was a large, gathering of residents of Footscray and surrounding districts to witness the third attempt to induce the alleged flying machine,...
...nhabitants wouldn't feel cornered and turned their will to resist to fanatical/extreme resolve. I think that was one of the consequences of aerial bombing: the will to resist increased to large extent. Well, maybe I'm forcing my point to much. Anyway, it was just an idea. Erik Lund Like Gavin said, siege trains included high-angle mortars as well as guns. They were lighter than guns (the biggest mortars used at Lille were allotted 12 horse teams v...
