1930s

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Self-help in an air raid

15 March 2010 in 1910s, 1930s, Civil defence, Periodicals by Brett Holman | 11 comments

The following letter appeared in the Evening News, 13 March 1935, 6:

On the brick wall at the side of our street door can still be seen faintly two large letters, “P. P.,” which stood for Poplar Patrol. Every Friday night it was my job to collect 3d. from each house-hold that belonged to the “P.P.” This paid for rent, fire and refreshments for our small front room, where three men, each in his turn, used to sit up every night.

In the event of a raid, as soon as they got the first warning they used to run and knock on every door where there was “P.P.”

– From Mrs. G. Stillwell, 9, Finnymore-road, Dagenham, Essex

Air-raid alerts in the First World War were highly variable in both form and usefulness: depending on the time and the place, they might include Boy Scout buglers, police cyclists wearing signs saying ‘TAKE COVER’, or maroons which sounded something like bombs going off. Government authorities dithered over whether it was even advisable to give warnings, since they could lead to unnecessary anxiety and (perhaps more importantly) lost sleep. So it was possible for civilians to not know there was an air-raid alert on at all, particularly if they were already asleep. I assume this was the reason for the Poplar Patrol: any family concerned about caught in their beds when the Zeppelins or Gothas came could subscribe their 3d. a week and be assured of a loud knock on the door, whatever the government was or wasn’t doing that week.

I think Samuel Smiles would have approved of this form of community self-help. On the other hand, it might be hard luck for those who didn’t (or couldn’t) pay up, if a bomb fell in their street. I wonder if voluntary civil defence schemes like this created local schisms between the ins and the outs, as the more inclusive (but still mostly voluntary) air-raid precautions of the 1930s and 1940s did to a degree.

A minor question: why ‘Poplar’? Poplar and Dagenham are both in east London, but aren’t particularly close to each other. In fact, Dagenham wasn’t considered part of London until 1926. My guess is that it is a reference to the shocking tragedy of the Upper North Street School in Poplar, which was hit by a Gotha’s bomb on 13 June 1917. Eighteen children were killed, including sixteen 5- and 6-year olds. For a long time, the Poplar infants school symbolised the horrors of the new warfare, just as Guernica did after 1937.

61-67 Warrington Crescent, 8 March 1918

7 March 2010 in 1910s, 1930s, Maps, Pictures by Brett Holman | 4 comments

61-67 Warrington Crescent

This is Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, on the morning of 8 March 1918, after it had been hit by a 1-ton bomb dropped by a Giant bomber the night before — one of the largest to fall on London during the First World War and the most materially destructive. Twelve people were killed (including Lena Ford, who wrote the words to the song “Keep the home fires burning”). It was the first air raid to come in the dark of the moon and, fortunately, the second-last of the war.
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In the next war

23 February 2010 in 1930s, Books by Brett Holman | 11 comments

‘In the Next War’ was a short series of books published in Britain in 1938 and 1939, edited by Basil Liddell Hart. Unlike the earlier To-day and To-morrow books which attempted to predict things to come, these were much less eclectic and much more narrowly focused on future warfare: airpower; seapower; tanks, infantry and the Territorials; gas, civilians and propaganda. The actual arrival of the next war in 1939 seems to have cut the series short, as two of these were never published (those on infantry and, to my regret, civilians).

The authors were also drawn from a more select group, as they mostly seem to have had prior credentials in their subjects (not always the case with ‘To-day and To-morrow’, where the ability to come up with an interesting take seems to have been at least as important as expertise). J. M. Spaight was a prolific writer on airpower, and late of the Air Ministry; Jonathan Griffin had written a couple of widely read books on similar topics (and also editor of Essential News and, oddly enough, translator of Babar the Elephant) which suggests to me that his book on civilians would have focused on ARP. (Both Spaight and Griffin were now more-or-less sceptical of the knock-out blow paradigm.) Most of the other authors were or had been in the services, mostly in the Army. Henry Thuiller had been head of the wartime Trench Warfare Supply Department (which had a responsibility for manufacture of chemical weapons), while Eric Dorman-Smith was to have a controversial career in the next war, but in the last one had served with distinction and in the meantime had experience with the Army’s experiments with mechanised warfare. Sidney Rogerson was the author of Twelve Days, a popular memoir of the Somme, but I’m not sure what his qualifications for writing on propaganda were. Eric Sheppard had written a couple of books on the American Civil War, as well as what looks like a military history study guide for Sandhurst. Russell Grenfell had served in the Royal Navy and was a veteran of Jutland; he already had a number of books on naval matters to his credit (and in 1940 wrote under the pseudonym T 124, arguing that with adequate sea- and airpower, the capture of the Low Countries by a hostile nation was nothing to fear). I don’t know much about Green; as he had a DFC he must have been in the RFC/RAF but here he is writing about the Territorials, with which he must have had some connection. His volume was actually advertised in advance as being by the Deputy Director General of the Territorial Army, Sir John Brown, but perhaps he had to turn this down due to his official position.

From the little I’ve read of it, I think ‘In the Next War’ is an interesting series, so I’ve put up a short bibliography. It certainly presents a very different take on the future than that of ‘To-day and To-morrow’: rather than bright and exciting, it was going to be bloody. But that the future was still thought worth writing about still reflects a faith that there probably would, after all, be some sort of world worth to live and die for.

War games: deja vu edition

19 February 2010 in 1930s, 1940s, Games and simulations, Periodicals by Brett Holman | 10 comments

Compare and contrast. The Daily Mail in 2007:

During the dark days of the Second World War, British children passed the time with marbles, hopscotch, tiddlywinks and, for a lucky few, a Monopoly set.

But over in Germany, the amusements were far less innocent.

In one version of bagatelle named Bombers over England, children as young as four were encouraged to blow up settlements by firing a spring-driven ball on to a board featuring a map of Britain and the tip of Northern Europe.

Players were awarded a maximum 100 points for landing on London, while Liverpool was worth 40.

And the Daily Mail in 2010:

British children of the time were playing marbles and hidding [sic] in air raid shelters.

But for youngsters under the Third Reich, this board game was invented to teach them the tactics of warfare – against a British foe.

The war time amusement, Adlers Luftverteidigungs spiel, which translates as the Eagle Air Defence Game, involves two or more players attacking enemy positions on a geographically illustrated board while defending friendly territory.

The supposed contrast between pacifist British kids and militarist German kids is as silly now as it was then. Apparently the Daily Mail hasn’t learned anything in the interim. (I checked to see if the same person was responsible for both, but the new article is credited to the improbably-named “DAILY MAIL REPORTER”.) The only difference is in the quality of the comments: last time they took the writer to task for his foolishness, now they’re almost spEak You’re bRanes-worthy.

No doubt there were differences between British and German games of the period — it’s hard to imagine any British equivalent of the 1936 game Juden Raus, where the aim is to force the Jews in your town to emigrate to Palestine — but simplistic dichotomies (as the Daily Mail seems to be fond of) are not going to help us understand what they were.

A Japanese death ray?

24 January 2010 in 1930s, 1940s, Books by Brett Holman | 11 comments

If anyone came close to creating a death ray weapon by the end of the Second World War, it was the Japanese army. It wouldn’t have helped them much, however, as they weren’t at war with rabbits. According to Richard Overy in The Air War 1939-1945 (Washington: Potomac Books, 2005 [1980]), 195:

The lack of satisfactory evaluative machinery led for example to the diversion of considerable resources to the search for a ‘death ray’; a search that Western powers had abandoned in the 1930s. By the end of the war the Japanese ‘ray’ could kill a rabbit after five minutes at a distance of 1,000 yards.

The reference Overy gives for this is the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, report 15, appendix XX, but this appears to be in error as that’s online and has only ten appendices. According to this site, report 63 (Japanese Air Weapons and Tactics) does in fact discuss the death ray. Unfortunately I can’t find that one (not for free, any way).
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The rise of ‘Luftwaffe’

20 January 2010 in 1930s, 1940s, Words by Brett Holman | 23 comments

Because I’m too lazy to write a proper post, here are some of my recent tweets:

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in The Times was on 24 May 1939, as the owner of 2 yachts entered in a race to Germany.

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in the Manchester Guardian was on 30 Nov 1939, in a commentary on the different national air forces.

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in the Observer was on 5 June 1938, again in reference to a yacht race.

The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in Parliament may have been on 21 Feb 1940, in a question about air strengths: http://bit.ly/6yQL6d

It seems that “Luftwaffe” was not in wide circulation in English before c. 1939. It’s somewhat anachronistic then, to use it for the 1930s.

… at least when talking about Britain and its fear of the German air force. But “Luftwaffe” is entrenched, and so much handier!

I can add some other data points. The first use in the New York Times was on 17 February 1940, as part of the name of a German propaganda film (D III 88, Die neue deutsche Luftwaffe greift an). Less authoritatively (because incomplete), the first mention in the Google Newspaper Archive is from 15 January 1939 in the Chicago Daily Tribune (in an article entitled ‘The Nazi air force’).

As might be expected, aviation periodicals were onto the word ‘Luftwaffe’ earlier. Flight first used it on 11 March 1937, in an article about a visit to a German squadron. Aeroplane used it as early as 1 April 1936, in the title of a German-language book being reviewed (Die deutsche Luftwaffe by Kürbs), but there could easily be an earlier use. Oddly, the OED gives The Times in 1935 as the earliest cite, although I can’t find it in the online version:

1935 Times 23 May 15/1 The armed forces are henceforth known collectively as the Wehrmacht (Defence Force) and consist of the Army (Heer), Navy (Kriegsmarine), and the Air Arm (Luftwaffe).

But I stand by the conclusion I originally tweeted, i.e. that ‘Luftwaffe’ was not a widely used term in English before around 1939 (in fact, more like 1940). Between 1935, when the Luftwaffe was officially founded, and the start of the war, it generally seems to have been referred to as ‘the German Air Force’ or some variation thereof (as I noted in response to a query from @clioandme).

Well, so what, one might ask? Not very much, I’d have to answer. I’m fairly pedantic about avoiding anachronistic words — I consciously nearly always write ‘aeroplane’, for example, instead of ‘airplane’ (an Americanism, I think, in my period at least) or ‘plane’ (only common from the late 1930s, at least in written British English). But although the man on the Clapham omnibus might have looked confused if asked in 1935 or 1938 if he was afraid of the Luftwaffe, it was a term used by some English speakers at the time (and presumably all German speakers), it was widely used in the somewhat important period 1939-45, it’s an accepted term today (that it’s in the OED is significant), and it’s precise and concise. It’s too useful to discard, even if it were possible to do so. So all I hope for is that just pointing out the slight anachronicity of ‘Luftwaffe’ for the years 1935 to 1939 will satisfy my inner pedant.

It’s alive!

18 January 2010 in 1920s, 1930s, After 1950, Air control, Blogging, Contemporary by Brett Holman | 8 comments

After a long hiatus, a new Military History Carnival has appeared, at The Edge of the American West and H-War. (Thanks, David Silbey!) A post on combat drones at Legal History Blog caught my eye. It suggests that drones are part of a process in America, post-Vietnam, whereby the need for public support for military adventurism is minimised by the increasing use of high technology, particularly airpower, since they minimise American casualties and hence political resistance. I’d argue it goes back much further than that. Air control between the wars — as practiced by the RAF in Iraq and the US Marine Corps in Nicaragua — had much the same purpose. And then there’s the (alleged) American preference for security through superweapons. Still, the conversations we are now having about the ethical and political ramifications of drones are interesting; the prospect of robotic warfare in the interwar period didn’t lead to the same debates. We have different interests now, it seems, even with respect to the same subjects.

To-day and to-morrow

10 January 2010 in 1920s, 1930s, Books, International air force, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Space by Brett Holman | 5 comments

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

‘To-day and To-morrow’ was a series of over a hundred essays on ‘the future’ of a diverse range of subjects, which were published in pamphlet form by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. between 1924 and 1931. The authors are equally varied: some were acknowledge experts in their fields, others seem to have been chosen for their ability to provoke. Some of the ‘To-day and To-morrow’ essays have since attained classic status; most have been forgotten. But as a whole they are an impressive testimony to a vibrant, wideranging (and idiosyncatic) kind of British futurism, and I think they deserve more attention. Some of them have been reprinted from time to time, and if you’re rich you can both nearly all of them in collected volumes through Routledge, but otherwise there are so many they are are hard to track down. So I’ve tried to compile a definitive list of the series’ titles (which are mostly classical allusions) with links to online sources for the texts and some sort of author biography, where available. Google Books has many of them, but only snippets or previews, so I’ve linked to other sources where possible. Additions and corrections are welcome.

Physically, they were very small books (pott octavo, to be precise), easy to slip into a pocket, and numbered only a hundred pages or so, in large type and generous margins. Their price was 2/6, about the same price as a cheap novel, but five times the price of the later, hugely successful Penguins. So they did not attract a mass readership, but do seem to have been much read by the chattering classes. (See Peter J. Bowler, Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2009), 139.) Many of the titles went through multiple impressions. And at least one was discussed in the House of Commons.
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The field marshal and the ghost rockets

20 December 2009 in 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Cold War, Collective security, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Phantom airships and other panics, Radio by Brett Holman | 8 comments

Field Marshal Jan Smuts, prime minister of South Africa, broadcast a speech on the BBC on 29 September 1946. He talked about the prospects for peace in the post-war world, a subject on which he could claim some authority, since he had helped unify Anglophones and Afrikaners after the Boer War, and was involved in the Paris peace conferences after both world wars. The speech was mainly about the United Nations (or as he quaintly called it, ‘Uno’) and the growing signs of friction between the former Allies on the Security Council. And we all know how that turned out. (Churchill had given his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in March.) But one section is somewhat confusing for modern readers:

The United States may not long continue to enjoy the sole secret of the atom bomb, and this and other no less deadly weapons will at no distant date be in the possession of other nations also. The flying bombs, now seen nightly in the west, are indications of what is going on behind the curtain. It is highly doubtful whether any new weapons, or indeed any mechanical inventions, could ever be relied on to remove the danger of war. A peaceful world order could only be safely based on a new spirit and outlook widely spread and actively practised among the nations.1

Flying bombs seen nightly in the west? What flying bombs?

Smuts was referring to reports which had been coming out of Sweden since May, and more recently from Denmark and Greece. Fast moving objects, sometimes with wings, sometimes without, were seen flashing across the sky. Some had flames shooting out the rear; others appeared to manoeuvre. Some of them crashed; residents of Malmö reported that windows were broken when a rocket ‘exploded’ over their town.2 They were sometimes even tracked on radar. A photo was even taken of one. They were seen by military personnel as well as by ordinary people. An example:

One of the mysterious bombs which in recent weeks have been passing across Sweden was seen last night by an officer of the Air Defence Department of the Defence Staff. He reports that the bomb looked like a fireball with a clear yellow flame passing at an estimated height of between 1,500 and 3,000 feet and at a considerable but quite measurable speed.3

The term now given to these objects is ghost rockets.
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  1. The Times, 30 September 1946, 5. Emphasis added.
  2. Manchester Guardian, 17 August 1946, 6.
  3. Ibid., 8 August 1946, 6.

Air men of The Times

16 December 2009 in 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Periodicals by Brett Holman | No comments

I’ve just had a go at working out who held the influential position of aeronautical correspondent (or air correspondent, in later years) for The Times for its first third of a century or so. No names were used in the articles themselves, so the easiest way to find them seems to be through the obituary columns of The Times. Here’s what I’ve managed to come up with, along with their years of service and the date of their obituary:

  • Harry Delacombe, 1907-1910. Obituary: 21 January 1959.
  • Hubert Walter, at least 1915-1916, perhaps 1914-1917. Obituary: 22 December 1933.
  • Colin Cooper, 1919? Obituary: 30 March 1938.
  • Ronald Carton, c.1919-1923. Obituary: 11 July 1960.
  • C.G. Colebrook, 1923-1930. Obituary: 30 August 1930.
  • E. Colston Shepherd, 1929-1939. Obituary: 2 August 1976.
  • [Edit: Oliver Stewart, 1939-1940. Obituary: 23 December 1976. See below.]
  • Arthur Narracott, 1940-1967. Obituary: 17 May 1967.

There are some gaps and contradictions here. There could be a gap between Shepherd and Narracott of a year or two, enough for somebody else to do the job. Colebrook was air correspondent until 1930, but Shepherd started in 1929. That may be because Colebrook was ill towards the end and died in harness, so perhaps Shepherd started to take over some of the workload before then. Cooper seems to have been air correspondent for only a short time, as he resigned from the RAF in 1919, when Northcliffe gave him the job, but Ronald Carton (better known as the crossword compiler!) did the job for four years from 1919 (he covered Alcock and Brown). The job was said to be vacant when Colebrook started, so there may be another short gap there. All I know of Walter (a scion of the family which founded The Times) is that he there in 1915-6. He was in Berlin until (perhaps) 1914 and went overseas again in 1917, so presumably those years represent the endpoints of his occupancy. And I don’t know who held the job in the crucial years between 1910 and 1914. Oddly, according to their obituaries, three men had the honour of being the first aeronautical correspondent of The Times: Walter, Cooper and Carton. Which is odd, since Delacombe predated all of them!

My main reason for doing this to work out whether P. R. C. Groves was ever The Times’s aeronautical correspondent, as both Barry Powers and Uri Bialer have written (without giving any more information). As far as I can tell, he was not. There’s no mention of this in his personal archive or publications, and as the above shows, no gap for him to fit into. He didn’t retire from the RAF until 1922, and there was no vacancy until 1923. Groves did write some articles for The Times in 1922 and 1923, but they appeared under his own name – except for one article early in 1922, which used a phrase which was highly characteristic of Groves and appeared only days before the first of his official articles. But it wasn’t bylined ‘Our aeronautical correspondent’ as would be usual, but ‘An aeronautical correspondent’. It was an anonymous, freelance contribution, not from somebody on staff. So I can’t see how Groves could have been the aeronautical correspondent for The Times.

Edit: thanks to Rose Wild of the Times Archive Blog, who picked up my post on Twitter, I can now fill in one of the gaps: Oliver Stewart, previously a long-serving air correspondent for the Morning Post, helped out at The Times in 1939-1940.

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