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Suspicious minds

15 December 2011 in 1910s, Aircraft, Archives, Australia, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Rumours by Brett Holman | 3 comments

I've recently begun some research at the National Archives of Australia (the Melbourne reading room of which is conveniently only about half a kilometre from my house) into the 1918 mystery aeroplane scare. It's always exciting to get to work on a new set of primary sources; and this is my first time working in a state archive so it's doubly interesting. I can already see that there's a lot of useful material, and my original idea of a short, simple case study is already starting to seem optimistic.

The main file I've looked at so far is NAA: MP367/1, 512/3/1319, 'Reports from 2nd M D during War Period on lights, aeroplanes, signals etc.', a big fat dossier of reports from the public and the results of military and police investigations into them. 2nd Military District seems to have covered New South Wales, so it's actually not what I ultimately want: most of the 1918 sightings took place in Victoria, i.e. 3rd Military District. But as NSW was the other big state (somewhat more people, more important industrially and commercially; but Victoria had the seat of government and defence headquarters) it'll be useful as a control.
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The problem of ærial propulsion solved

27 October 2011 in 1900s, 1910s, 1940s, Aircraft, Australia, Before 1900, Blogging and tweeting, Periodicals by Brett Holman | No comments

In the venerable tradition of lazyblogging, here is a storified version of an exchange of tweets today between myself and @TroveAustralia, concerning an apparently forgotten Australian aviation pioneer, W. T. Carter of Williamstown, formerly a member of the Victorian colonial legislature. In the mid-1890s, Carter dabbled in electric motors (with help from A. U. Alcock, who has been credited with inventing an ancestor of the hovercraft) and propellors (later patenting one in Britain), and seems in 1894 to have successfully demonstrated a flying model, a small drum-shaped object with two propellors at each end. Long after his death it was claimed that he had actually built and flown an aeroplane at Maidstone, a western suburb of Melbourne, again in the mid-1890s, but it's hard to believe this could have escaped the attention of the press (especially given his evident interest in self-promotion).
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A Guilty Man?

27 October 2011 in 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Aircraft, Books, Pictures, Reprisals by Brett Holman | 2 comments

Sir Kingsley Wood and a Blenheim Mk I

I'm sure everybody has a favourite story about Sir Kingsley Wood. Mine is the one from when he was Air Minister at the start of the Second World War, and he refused to bomb Germany on the grounds that it would damage private property. As A. J. P. Taylor tells it:

Kingsley Wood, secretary for air, met a proposal to set fire to German forests with the agonized cry: 'Are you aware it is private property? Why, you will be asking me to bomb Essen next.'

It's a great anecdote which perfectly sums up the dithering nature of Chamberlain's government during the Bore War, unable or unwilling to fight a total war (it took Churchill to do that), and it's understandable why it appears in so many books and websites. Piers Brendon includes it in a discussion of the weak men Chamberlain surrounded himself with; Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott in The Appeasers. And fair enough; Wood is one of Cato's Guilty Men, after all. The only problem is that it's not clear if it's actually true; or, even if it is true and Wood did say it, whether it accurately reflects British bombing policy before May 1940.
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The successful start which ended in failure

20 October 2011 in 1900s, 1930s, Aircraft, Australia, Civil aviation, Interviews, Pictures, Radio, Sounds by Brett Holman | 1 comment

VOTES FOR WOMEN

A common complaint about this blog is that it doesn't feature nearly enough pictures of airships. So here's one, a 27-metre long non-rigid which belonged to Henry Spencer, scion of a remarkably airminded family (sixteen aeronauts across four generations). Indeed, he built it with his brothers. The photograph was taken on 16 February 1909 and apparently shows the first ever powered flight from Hendon aerodrome, though neither Spencer nor his airship are mentioned in David Oliver's Hendon Aerodrome: A History (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1994).

But much more interesting than the airship itself, it must be said, is what it was used for. The clue is the slogan emblazoned on the side of the envelope: 'VOTES FOR WOMEN'. Spencer had hired his airship out as a propaganda platform to Muriel Matters, an Australian-born suffragette who was very active in the Women's Freedom League (a non-violent breakaway from the better-known WPSU). Matters had won some publicity the previous year by chaining herself to the grille of the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons. Her airship flight was also designed to make Parliament take notice of the suffragist cause: the new session was opening that very day and it was her intention to fly over Westminster and drop Votes For Women leaflets on it. In the end Spencer and Matters didn't make it there, having been blown off course into a tree in Coulsden, well to the south. Three decades later, Matters herself gave a wonderful account of her flight to the BBC, which can be heard online here. (Ignore the photo there, which is of the Army airship Baby.)

The photograph above is from a scrapbook belonging to an American women's suffrage organisation, so the message did travel quite some distance, albeit to a receptive audience; I couldn't find any mention of Matters' flight in a quick search of the British press. It took nearly a decade for the WFL's demand to be partially fulfilled. And it's nice to see that the part Matters played in using airpower for progressive causes is still remembered in her native South Australia.

Dreaming war, seeing aeroplanes -- I

9 June 2011 in 1910s, Aircraft, Australia, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Rumours by Brett Holman | 3 comments

Wölfchen

While researching a possible British mystery aeroplane in 1936, which turned out to be nothing interesting, I came across a genuine mystery aeroplane scare which I'd never heard of before, from Australia and New Zealand in March and April 1918. I'm sure somebody else must have noticed it before now, as it was trivial to find using Trove and Papers Past. But I haven't been able to find mention of it in my usual sources, so here's what I've got so far.

Firstly, some context. In March 1918, it was getting on for four years since the start of the Great War. The soldiers of Australia and New Zealand had been engaged in combat for just under three of those years, two of them on the Western Front. The armies there seemed to be in a deadlock. All that can be done is to keep the two ANZAC corps supplied with men and munitions; but in Australia it is only a few months since the public rejected conscription for a second time, in a bitterly divisive plebiscite. If victory seemed to be a long way off, at least so did defeat.
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The Emperor's Viceroy

3 June 2011 in 1930s, Aircraft, Books, Civil aviation, Pictures by Brett Holman | 4 comments

Airspeed Viceroy

In 1935, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, tried to buy the Airspeed Viceroy, an aeroplane which had been built to order for the London-Melbourne air race the year before. The Viceroy (above) was a one-off, customised version of Airspeed's successful Envoy, a twin-engined civil transport which could carry six passengers in addition to its pilot. Improvements included more powerful engines, an auxiliary fuel tank and a higher take-off weight. But it failed to complete the air race, pulling out at Athens due to mechanical troubles. Still, it would have made a nice plaything for an emperor, you might think; but that's not why he wanted it. He wanted it for a bomber.

Nevil Shute, then managing director of Airspeed, tells the story in his autobiography, Slide Rule. In autumn 1935 he was approached by 'Jack Norman' (a pseudonym chosen by Shute) wishing to purchase the Viceroy on behalf of a client, Yellow Flame Distributors, Ltd, 'whose business was the rapid transport of cinema films between the various capital cities of Europe'. As the Viceroy had just been sitting in a hangar for months after being recovered from its former owner (who had refused to pay for it and indeed sued Airspeed for their troubles), Shute was very glad to shift it and so set his men to work getting it ready for flight. But then Norman came back and told Shute that Yellow Flame were worried about the inflammable nature of celluloid and asked, 'Could we fit bomb racks underneath the wings to carry to films on?'
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Thursday, 15 May 1941

15 May 2011 in 1940s, Aircraft, Civil defence, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures, Post-blogging 1940 by Brett Holman | No comments

Manchester Guardian, 15 May 1941, 5

The remarkable flight to Scotland of Rudolf Hess still dominates the headlines today, though much more so in the Manchester Guardian (5) than in The Times, it must be said. More details are emerging. It now seems that Hess was trying to meet with one specific person, the Duke of Hamilton, whose seat is at Dungavel, just a few miles from where Hess landed by parachute.

The Duke is on active service, and was not at Dungavel on Saturday night. The Duke, who is the premier peer of Scotland, is 38, and succeeded to his title last year on the death of his father. He is best remembered for his boxing and flying achievements as Marquis of Douglas and Clydesdale, and he has met Hess through his sporting interests.

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This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

The dream of unmanned flight

7 May 2011 in 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Aircraft, Art, Books, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | 13 comments

Illustrated London News, 6 September 1913, 363

A recent post at Ptak Science Books alerted me to the existence of page 363 of the Illustrated London News for 6 September 1913. Not that I was surprised by this in general terms, but I was unaware of what was on it: an artist's impression of a both a flying aircraft carrier -- which idea I've discussed before -- and an airship drone -- which I haven't.

As the images above and below show, the idea was that the 'parent dirigible' (which looks very much like a Zeppelin) would carry several of these 40-foot long 'crewless, miniature air-ships' slung underneath it, and then launch them when in range of a target (here a fortification). The smaller airship would then be controlled by radio to fly drop its bombs 'on any desired spot'.
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Friday, 14 March 1941

14 March 2011 in 1940s, Air defence, Aircraft, Collective security, International air force, Periodicals, Pictures, Post-blogging 1940 by Brett Holman | 4 comments

Glasgow Herald, 14 March 1941, 5

The big news today is that the latest Italian offensive against Greek forces in the Tepelini sector has been a disaster. War correspondents estimate 10,000 Italian casualties, including 2000 dead; yet 'it was stated in authoritative circles in London yesterday that the Italians do not appear to have made any perceptible progress' (5). This is despite (perhaps there's a hint of because of) Mussolini's presence at the front lines over the last few days, 'leading or encouraging the Italian troops'. Greek spirits are understandably high. Looking at the bigger picture in the Mediterranean, the Herald's military correspondent suggests that the Germans

are not over-anxious to commit their forces to an attack on Greece while Russia is dissatisfied. Turkey threatens to become actively hostile, and Yugoslavia is, at least, very restless.

The reported presence of three German divisions (or elements thereof) in Tripoli is puzzling. It will certainly bolster Italian morale in Libya after recent defeats there.

It is not likely that an offensive against the Army of the Nile is planned. But it may well be necessary in German interests to safeguard a buffer between British troops and those of the French African Empire.

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This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

Wednesday, 12 March 1941

12 March 2011 in 1940s, Aircraft, Civil defence, Collective security, International air force, Periodicals, Pictures, Post-blogging 1940 by Brett Holman | 6 comments

Glasgow Herald, 12 March 1940, 7

The Glasgow Herald, like many early-twentieth-century 'provincial' newspapers, made a serious effort to cover war and other international news, as well as reporting on national and local issues. (In fact, it almost seems more interested in what's happening overseas than it is in London or even Edinburgh.) Its highmindedness is also evident in its lack of interest in trivialities (no sports section today!) and in its rather staid appearance, with the outside pages taken up with classified ads, and the news and editorials at the centre of its twelve page. The Herald might be excused for its old-fashioned look: it was first published in 1783, making it two years older than The Times. (Though admittedly the Daily Mail, a jaunty newcomer, was like this too until the start of the war).

Above is the lead item in today's Herald, President Roosevelt's signing into law of the Lease-and-Lend Bill. This will allow (7)

the President to supply Britain and her Allies with almost unlimited supplies of guns, tanks, aeroplanes, ships, and all other war materials and goods.

In fact, he has already begun to do so, approving the transfer to Britain of 'the first allotment of Army and Navy material'. What this consists of was not revealed, but information from 'Well-informed circles in Washington' suggests that it may include 'Army and Navy 'planes, flying fortresses, and patrol bombers' as well as 'ships, tanks, and machine-guns'. And Roosevelt is asking Congress for another $7 billion to buy more weapons for Britain after that.
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This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

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