A GIANT OF THE AIR. A HANDLEY-PAGE FOUR-ENGINED BIPLANE.

A Handley Page V/1500, the Kabul bomber. Below is (I think) a S.E.5a.

Image source: Harry Golding, ed., The Wonder Book of Aircraft for Boys and Girls (London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1919), frontispiece. Painting by Geoffrey Watson.

ShareThis

A recent post on the new science fiction blog io9 (which I’m enjoying, but is it really so hard to put in spoiler warnings?) claimed that the Vickers Velos was the ‘ugliest and most worthless plane in the world’. Sure, it’s not pretty, but I’ve seen plenty that were uglier — fuglier, even. But there were a couple of links to lists of other ugly aircraft, which are always fun to browse. The first one had some bizarre nominations (the Dragon Rapide should never be on such a list) but I thought I’d found what may be the single ugliest aeroplane ever made, the three-engine variant of the Farman Jabiru airliner (it’s French, naturellement). I was going to write this post about it. But then I clicked through to the second list.

That is where I first saw the Vedo Villi.

I can’t take my eyes off it. I honestly can’t decide whether it’s ugly or beautiful. But it is somehow deeply, fundamentally, disturbingly, horrifyingly wrong. It is eldritch. It’s like something H. P. Lovecraft might have dreamed up, if he’d been an aircraft designer and wanted just the thing for the airminded cultist to nip down from Arkham Aerodrome to the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh for the weekend.

There is a photo of the Villi below. Read on — if you dare.

I have scoured dusty bookshelves, and plumbed the depths of the infinite archive. But all I can learn of this abomination is that it is from 1911, is French, is a pusher — and, some say, that it flew. It flew. That cannot — should not — be. It undermines my faith in the laws of aerodyamics — indeed, in the essential rationality of the Universe.

It is dark outside, and almost silent. Almost. I think I can hear something circling above in the sky … an engine … it sounds like it is whispering something to me — almost in tempo with the rhythm of my breathing — no, it can’t be — ‘VE-DO VILL-I! VE-DO VILL-I!’

ShareThis

Here’s something a bit different. It’s a paper model aeroplane which I made from a design published on 30 June 1934 in “Boys and Girls”, the weekly children’s supplement to the Daily Mail. The claim is made there that it glides, but sadly all mine does is stall and then enter a tailspin … but perhaps somebody taking greater care in making the model will have greater success! A PDF of the plan can be downloaded from here (size 1.4 Mb) and then printed out onto an A4-sized sheet of paper, if anyone wants to try it. The only other materials needed are a thin, stiff piece of card (for backing), glue, a match (for the wheel axle), a pin (for the propeller), tissue paper or something similar (to weight the nose, in the event that the model is actually airworthy). And scissors. The instructions are in the PDF; here are some tips based on my own experience:

• It does make it a lot easier if you fold where appropriate before you assemble the model!
• Take especial care to score along the lines on the rear fuselage section, as otherwise it will be out of shape and the tail assembly won’t sit straight.
• There’s no need to make the left and right tabs on the forward underside of the fuselage overlap precisely, as the “fuselage closing strip” is then going to be too wide for the fuselage at the front and will spoil the aeroplane’s clean lines.

I think the original was in colour, but the microfilm I printed it from was not, so unfortunately it’s a little drab. The colours could be worked out from the roundel and added with a paint program — or even just coloured in on the paper — but that would require more energy than I was prepared to expend :)

“Boys and Girls” would often include an aviation-related cartoon or story — in fact, one of the regular strips followed the adventures of Phil and Fifi, the “flying twins” — but this edition was chock-full of airminded goodness. The Whisker Pets see an aeroplane and decide to make their own (hilarity ensues); a stork-powered air show entertains the inhabitants of Treasure Island (’I like being an airwoman’, says Penelope the parrot); two panels list “Famous flyers’ great flights” (including some not so famous now, such as the non-stop flight of Codos and Rossi from New York to Syria in 1933); and on the Pet & Hobby Page, Teddy Tail provides some hints on how to make airworthy model aircraft — which I clearly should have read before making mine! This was obviously intended to coincide with the annual RAF Pageant held at Hendon on the very same day, a hugely popular air show: 200,000 attended that year, a record crowd — despite the best efforts of pacifist demonstrators outside the front gates.

This being the Daily Mail, there was probably another agenda besides getting plane-crazy youngsters to remind their parents to buy their favourite right-wing newspaper that Saturday: to make even more plane-crazy youngsters. The need to create an airminded youth was a common theme in the Rothermere press in the 1930s. For example, just two days earlier, Amy (Johnson) Mollison’s regular aviation column had been entitled “Don’t discourage the young idea in flying”,¹ in reference to an Air Ministry ban on solo flying under the age of 17, after a 16-year old boy had been killed doing just that near Scarborough. And, near the end of the year, Lord Rothermere himself contributed an article called “Make the youth of England air-minded! Has Germany 10,000 aeroplanes?”² — the question explaining and justifying the demand.

The RAF roundels on the model aeroplane mark it out as a machine of war, not a pleasure craft or commercial aeroplane. So while I had fun making and trying to fly it, I was also replaying (in a very small way) the mobilisation of youth for the next air war. I wonder how many of the adolescent boys and girls who made it before me joined the RAF or the ATA when the prospect of war became reality, just five years later?

1. Daily Mail, 28 June 1934, p. 4.
2. Daily Mail, 4 December 1934, p. 15.

ShareThis

This post relates to my trip to Europe in July-September 2007.

I’m currently at Hexham in Northumberland, where I’ve been busy touring some of the Hadrian’s Wall sites: Chesters (yesterday), Vindolanda and Housesteads (today). All of which were utterly memorable, and a write-up will eventually be forthcoming; but it was only at Vindolanda that I was buzzed by a very low- and very fast-flying Tornado! It turns out that Vindolanda is within the RAF’s Low Flying Area 13, so it’s probably a common enough event around here; but it’s not very common to me. Although I fumbled with the camera, I did manage to take one picture of it, before it screamed over the horizon:

Here’s a close-up:


This was of course very cool, but it did tend to drag me 18 or 19 centuries forward in time, especially since for the rest of the day, every time I heard a jet — which was frequently — I’d scan the skies, hoping for another pass …

I’m off to Edinburgh to-morrow, where presumably I’m less likely to be ducking ground-hugging aircraft — though having said that, last week I also saw a very low-flying twin-engine monoplane skimming the rooftops near Russell Square (for which it’s hard to come up with a good excuse). So, who knows!

ShareThis

This post relates to my trip to Europe in July-September 2007.

Of course.

I cancel a planned¹ trip to Hamburg for a conference in order to extend my stay in London by 4 days, so I can hit a few more archives and libraries that I really wanted to look at. And what happens? A 3-day tube strike, which started this afternoon and finishes the evening before I leave. To make matters worse, the places I want to go have been closed for the last week or more, and so I haven’t been able to confirm any appointments. So I don’t where I’m going or how I’ll get there. I’m so glad I decided to stay the extra days.

Actually, it’s not as bad as all that: one of the places I can walk to, another is on the Piccadilly line, which is my local line and is one of the few still running. But it will probably be packed solid. Again, getting to Peckham will in theory be ok, since the Northern line is also still running and so I can get to London Bridge and thence to Peckham Rye by National Rail. But of course, like every other poor sod using public transport I’ll have to factor in long delays and leave much earlier than I otherwise would. Just what I didn’t need to be doing when I’ve already got too much to do before I leave!

If only there was another way to travel …

This is a de Havilland Dragon Rapide which I spotted (and correctly identified! not that it’s a hard one …) while on the ferry to Greenwich on Sunday. It looks like the one which operates out of Duxford for tourist flights.

Well, I suppose there’s nowhere to land it near here anyway.

Sigh …

1. Well, more like “vaguely thought about” than “planned”, but still.

ShareThis

I don’t often link to interesting posts from Modern Mechanix because once you start, where do you stop? But I am compelled to point out this one which reprints an October 1934 Modern Mechanix and Inventions article about an American (presumably) idea for a solar-powered flying airfield.

It’s as simple as putting a landing strip for aeroplanes on top of an airship, and covering the rest of the top surface with ’solar photo cells’ (i.e., solar panels). The article suggests that one application would be that ‘Planes could land on the dirigible, floating over the sea, to refuel for trans-ocean passenger service’.

So, going one way, this links to other contemporary ideas for routinising flight over the Atlantic (in particular), such as the seadrome and Project Habbakuk. In another direction, it links to modern solar-powered airships designed for stratospheric surveillance. And finally, it links to real-life flying aircraft carriers such as the USS Macon and fictional ones such as HMS Whatever-it-was in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

There’s no information given in the article about whose idea this was. The suspicion arises that it was invented purely to justify putting an airship on the front cover … not too different from this post, really!

ShareThis

This post relates to my trip to Europe in July-September 2007.

Sunday no. 4 was the occasion (after the spooky Big Ben) for my visit to the Imperial War Museum London, which of course was always going to be a highlight of my sightseeing here.

The building itself was not quite what I expected, however. While aesthetically pleasing, it doesn’t seem grand enough, somehow. What I didn’t realise, before my visit, was that it was not purpose built for the IWM: it was originally Bedlam. I suppose I’m comparing it with the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Both of these were built after the First World War; they are wholly or in part memorials to the war dead, and both are visually very striking. I am reliably informed that the IWM has a memorial function as well, at least in intention, but I have to say this didn’t really come across — not when compared with the AWM, for example, which although it too is mainly a museum, is centred around the Hall of Memory (with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier), leading up to which is a long reflective pool and an eternal flame, enclosed by cloisters, along the walls of which are the names of over a hundred thousand Australians who have died in war. I wonder what it says about the different ways in which Australians and Britons remember their wars?

Those huge guns, by the way, are from the battleships HMS Ramillies and HMS Resolution and are of 15-inch calibre. And, to be fair, I must point out that the biggest gun at the AWM is only a 12-inch one, from the battlecruiser HMAS Australia :)

Alright, enough of that, get on with the cool stuff already. This is (part of) the Large Exhibits Hall, the first room visitors see. And yes, they are all large exhibits! In this photo there’s a He 162 “People’s Fighter” (though as far as I know, there wasn’t one in every garage) and a Sopwith Camel (to which the roundel at the top of the post belongs); below them, a Polaris sub-launched ballistic missile (AKA Britain’s “independent” nuclear deterrent); and around that, a T-34 tank, a Jagdpanther tank destroyer and a French 75.

I couldn’t work out what this was at first. It was obviously something aerial, First World War-era by the looks of it — I’m ashamed to say I had to read the sign to find out that it’s actually a Zeppelin observation car, which was dropped on a long cable underneath the airship in order to get location fixes below cloud cover. That is to say, with a man inside, who would give directions to the Zeppelin by telephone. It is thought to have been lost from LZ90 on the night of 2 September 1916.

Genesis of the Daleks? Well, no, actually it’s a Churchill Mark VII infantry tank.

Now this was rather impressive. It’s a British 1650-lb bomb — from the First World War, not the Second. It’s over 6 feet tall. According to the caption, four bombs of this type were dropped by O/400 bombers — presumably from Trenchard’s Independent Force — in an October 1918 raid on Kaiserslautern (which was to suffer much more destruction from the air in 1944). Behind are naval and artillery shells ranging from 14 to 18 inches.

A close-up of the Jagdpanther pictured earlier. According to the sign, it was knocked out by Allied gunfire and I assume these holes are the damage.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in the basement, in the permanent displays relating to the wars of the twentieth century — I thought they did a very good job of contextualising the items on display. This is a bronze eagle from the Speer-designed Reich Chancellery — Hitler’s office building — (in)complete with bullet holes from the Battle of Berlin.

Take cover — it’s a Zepp! Just kidding, it’s only a photo of a model of a Zeppelin, L33, which was forced down at Little Wigborough on the night of 24 September 1916 after a raid on London, and reverse engineered into the successful British airships, R33 and R34.

The badge and pennant of the Blackshirt Automobile Club; Malcolm Campbell supposedly displayed something like these on Bluebird.

Why, it’s an old friend, C 5422. The RAF Museum had a similarly huge reproduction on display. Somebody really should say something …

Some of the most interesting displays were those relating to ARP. I had no idea about things like the mustard gas detector paper shown above. Mustard gas is actually usually a liquid under normal conditions, with a boiling point of just 14° Celsius. So it is persistent and lies around in pools and drops, waiting for some unprotected soul to blunder into it. Hence the detector paper:

If after a raid you notice suspicious patches on walls, floors, doors, etc., fix of piece of Gas Detector Paper about 5 ins. x 3 ins. to a stick, and apply to the suspicious patches. If Mustard Gas is present the Gas Detector Paper will instantly turn PINK.

A charred roof tile from Hiroshima.

Back in the Large Exhibits Hall. A Spitfire showing off its elliptical wings.

A Be2c of the Royal Flying Corps. You can see the roundels on the top of the upper wings from underneath, which shows how thin the canvas is.

The Spitfire’s rival in beauty, the P-51 Mustang. Drop tanks ftw.

I didn’t catch what these were about — children’s drawings near the entrance, evidently something to do with the camouflage exhibition so maybe it’s this. They all seemed to have an anti-gun theme (not anti-war as such), so I wondered if that was spontaneous or had they been coached to draw to that theme? Still, they were rather touching.

I didn’t get a chance to see the IWM’s art collection, or the Falklands exhibition, or a bunch of other things. Nearly everywhere I go, I keep saying “I’ll have to go back”, but that’s looking less and less likely as my time here draws to a close!

ShareThis

This post relates to my trip to Europe in July-September 2007.

You want planes? We got planes.

After the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, though really it should be called the Technology Museum as there’s not a lot of what I would call basic science on show (perhaps due to the afore-mentioned Natural History Museum being right next door). Still, that’s just nit-picking, as this is yet another truly excellent museum.

I headed straight for the space section …

You only live twice, Mr Bond — or sometimes not at all. The fifth and last Black Arrow launch vehicle, and the end of the British space programme (if you are measuring such things only in terms of really big rocket launchers, that is).

A scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope which was so cute I just wanted to pick it up and take it home with me. OK, so at one-fifth scale it’s about the size of a small car instead of a bus, but that’s what excess baggage is for, right …

Now to the Making the Modern World gallery.

Another Rocket, Stephenson’s. Seriously, wow.

The working model of Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2. (They also have Babbage’s brain in a jar but I presume it doesn’t work so well any more.) It was designed in 1847-9 but not completed until 1991. It’s not a Turing machine like his later Analytical Design apparently was, but this is getting close to a general purpose computer. ObSlashdot: imagine a Beowulf cluster of these …

An example of the Avro 504, one of the most significant aircraft of the First World War era. First flown in 1913; used in the RNAS raid on the Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen in 1914, as well as for home defence late in the war but mainly used as trainers. Over 8000 were built, with many ending up in civilian use after the war: QANTAS’s first airliner was a 504K (total number of passengers: 2).

The Rolls-Royce “flying bedstead” (technically Thrust Measuring Rig), an experimental VTOL aircraft (well, loosely defined) from the mid-1950s.

The actual Apollo 10 Command Module, which has been around the Moon and back. I was just so amazed to be in the presence of this object that I forgot to take any good pictures.

Next, I found my way to the maritime section, which had lots of models and was therefore very cool, but models in glass cases don’t make for interesting photos so I’ll skip onto the aviation gallery …

A Vickers Vimy, the workhorse longrange bomber of the early RAF. I’m glad the Science Museum has one as my photos of the RAF Museum’s replica didn’t come out so well. Plus there’s the fact that this one isn’t a replica: it’s the one used by Alcock and Brown to fly across the Atlantic in 1919!

Another historic object: the Supermarine S.6B which won the Schneider Trophy for Britain in 1931 (the trophy itself is also on display and it’s ludicrously big). It was designed by R. J. Mitchell, who later designed the Spitfire. I suspect the S.6B’s influence on the Spitfire can be overstated, particularly when Mitchell’s failed Supermarine Type 224 design of 1934 — which was also called the Spitfire, but had gull wings, fixed undercarriage and an open cockpit — is ignored, as it often is (I didn’t see it mentioned in the Museum’s own exhibit on the evolution of the Spitfire, though I might have missed it). But certainly it was an important experiment in streamlining, and it pushed aero engine development too. And it does look cool.

The Westland-Hill Pterodactyl, one of the odder aircraft to come out of the interwar British aviation industry (and a favourite at RAF Pageants). It was originally an experiment in tailless flight; later, fighter and transatlantic passenger (!) variants were proposed. This is is one of the early models, the Pterodactyl IA from 1925. (NB. its efficacy against Zeppelins is unknown.)

Yet another important individual aeroplane: Amy Johnson’s Gipsy Moth “Jason”, the one in which she flew solo from London to Darwin in 1930. It’s an amazingly small and frail-looking aircraft for such a long and dangerous journey. I’m not superstitious at all, but personally I would have preferred a less ominous registration code than “G-AAAH”!

The gondola of the Beta, the first practical British military airship, built at Farnborough in 1910 and used to escort transports across the Channel early in the First World War.

Oh, why not — another shot of the S.6B, nestled in between the Vimy, a Hurricane and a Spitfire.

ShareThis

This post relates to my trip to Europe in July-September 2007.

On my first Saturday here, I spent the morning printing out pages from the Daily Mail at British Library Newspapers in Colindale, and then headed over to the nearby RAF Museum London for an afternoon wandering around the historic aircraft. The problem with this is that it meant I had to carry with me (a) my laptop and (b) a thick sheaf of printouts. This was not too hard at first, but as the day wore on my feet got sore, and my arms got weary, and both my patience and my ability to hold a camera still decreased as a result. When combined with the often dimly-lit exhibition halls (including the Battle of Britain hall) this meant that many of my photos didn’t turn out so well. Luckily for you, I’ve weeded out most of the bad ones!

Outside there are a few interesting displays, including some RAF search-and-rescue vessels — yes, boats! — and the following:

This (and the previous image) is a BAC Bloodhound surface-to-air missile. It’s always been one of my favourite missiles, because with all those boosters and fins, it looks like a missile “should”. Very Thunderbirds.

Having a Hurricane (and a Spitfire) sitting outside exposed to the elements seems rather ostentatious!

I made the mistake of eating at the cafe, then entered the Battle of Britain Hall.

The poor old Defiant, here in night-fighter mode. Despite the turret, very pleasing to the eye.

This Hurricane is mainly of interest because it shows the early-war underside paint scheme, black and white, intended to make it easier to distinguish friend from foe. But it seems it also made the aircraft easier to see, and so from June 1940 the switch was made to the more familiar pale blue.

For some reason, several of the German aircraft in the Battle of Britain hall were actually night-fighter variants, like this Me 110 and a Ju 88 — i.e., not much like the types actually present in the Battle. I suppose there were more of these around at the end of the war when most of these warbirds were captured?

A Stuka. And a mannequin. I have a low tolerance for mannequins in museums, and unfortunately the Battle of Britain hall has them at every turn, including at least one with a missing hand. (On the other hand, I love models and dioramas, and the RAF Museum doesn’t. Oh well.)

The Lysander army co-operation aircraft, probably best known for its role in landing SOE agents in occupied Europe. Looking at it, “sturdy” is the word that comes to mind; I do like the headlights on the spats!

Look out, it’s a revenge weapon! Aieee! And behind it, a Sunderland, the “flying porcupine” (though the British press called them “flying battleships”, at least at first). You get to walk through this, which as a devotee of flying boats I of course loved.

The Milestones of Flight exhibit was crammed full of significant aircraft (and thankfully, well-lit).

Now they’re just showing off! If you’ve got a few to spare, why not stick a Spitfire up on the wall, with paint stripped back to the metal and propeller blades removed? (It does show off the small dimples in the skin, though.)

I think this is a replica of the gondola for HM Airship Nulli Secundus I, “Second to None”, so called because it was pretty obviously second to every other airship around — that’s the story I like, anyway! This flew in 1907, was wrecked in a rain shower and was rebuilt the following year, as the slightly more successful Nulli Secundus II.

The Sopwith Camel, a true classic. Behind it, there’s an AGM-86 cruise missile and a Sikorsky Hoverfly, probably the first helicopter to go into production.

Also behind it is a Fokker D.VII … watch out, Biggles!

The Hawker Hart day bomber, at one point the fastest aircraft in the RAF inventory. It must be one of the few bombers to have spawned a successful fighter variant! (Outside of night-fighters, that is.)

Business end of a Me 109G, a mid-war variant. Yes, technically I should probably say “Bf 109″, but the British press nearly always called them Me 109s, so I’ll stick with that.

A rare Ki-100 of the Japanese Army, a late-war fighter.

The Me 262 jet fighter. I like this angle because it looks like it’s thinking about making a run for it …

As much as I could fit in frame of a Mosquito.

The Mustang: shiny!

Now into the Bomber Hall, where I have very few non-blurry photos.

This is a Be2b, an early RFC bomber/observation aeroplane (in fact it was in service at the start of the First World War). The engine always looks way too small on this thing.

The capacious Lancaster.

Underneath the big wing of a Vulcan.

Finally — and I’m not really sure what it’s doing in the Bomber Hall — a Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

There’s still plenty more I didn’t see (including the Grahame-White Factory Collection — the Museum site is, I believe, roughly congruent with the old Hendon display aerodrome), so hopefully I’ll get a chance to go back before I go home.

ShareThis

Last year I talked about J. M. Spaight’s The Sky’s the Limit (here, here and here), and how its account of the then-developing Battle of Britain was somewhat surprising to anyone familiar with the standard narrative of the summer of 1940. Which is not at all to say that the standard narrative is wrong, just that things quite naturally looked different while the Battle was still in progress.

Now I’m looking at press accounts of the beginning of the Blitz, September and early October 1940, and again I’m finding things which don’t seem to have made it into the received picture. One very striking one is the apparently near-universal opinion that the Me 109 fighter was inferior to British fighters: not just a little bit, but greatly; not just to the Spitfire, but to the Hurricane as well.¹ So for example, the Manchester Guardian’s air correspondent confidently reported that

That Göring’s air force has had no single-seat fighter that could compare with the Spitfire or the Hurricane is a fact that has been obvious since the very start of the war in the air against Britain and the replacement of the Messerschmitt 109, that has suffered so heavily at the hands of R.A.F. fighter squadrons, by something better was to be expected.²

Nearly seventy years later, reasonable people still can and do disagree over the relative merits of these fighters. But I think you would be hard-pressed these days to find anyone who would claim that the Me 109 was not comparable in air combat to the Spitfire, and substantially (though certainly not overwhelmingly) superior to the Hurricane. The reason for the underrating of the Me 109 is not hard to find, when British claims for German losses were routinely too high by a factor of two or three. But I suspect Fighter Command pilots wouldn’t have been so sanguine, regardless of the numbers!

The second story was put out by official German sources: that Hermann Goering personally flew a bomber on a raid over London on the evening of 15 September!

Government quarters said that Göring piloted a Junkers 88 bomber, escorted by two Messerschmitt destroyer ‘planes³ on either side of his ‘plane. After returning to his headquarters at a small village in Normandy, Göring, according to these spokesmen, declared that he was most impressed by the effect of the German bombing of London.⁴

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this story before, and I don’t think it’s actually true. Goering was of course a pilot during the First World War, a fighter ace in fact, and flew as a commercial pilot in the early 1920s, but he didn’t take a lot of interest in flying thereafter. This is despite his becoming head of the Luftwaffe in 1933; at that point he hadn’t flown since 1922⁵ and it seems unlikely that he would have found time to get much practice in, what with all his hunting, gourmandising, and whatnot. Presumably, then, this story was concocted to show Goering as a vital man of action, willing and able to lead his troops into action.

The third story — actually a pair of stories — was about the German invasion. Not just the one which, it was feared, was about to take place, but the one which had already taken place and been repulsed! These stories originated from Americans who had recently been in France or who had received letters from there.

The invading German fleet is said to have started from St. Malo, Brittany, with the expectation of landing on the West Coast of England. Reports received, it is said, indicate that the result was “nothing short of suicide.”⁶

A couple of days later, a different source (an American surgeon, late of Paris) claimed that ‘The Germans have already attempted to invade England several times at different points and each time have failed’.⁷ He also ‘told of seeing “hundreds of German bodies in the water near Cherbourg”‘⁸ (presumably something to do with invasion exercises, rather than the real thing, though he said these were not being conducted near there). Of course, none of this actually happened: Operation Sealion was never attempted. I have actually heard these stories before, as James Hayward discusses them in a fascinating little book, The Bodies on the Beach: Sealion, Shingle Street and the Burning Sea Myth of 1940 (Dereham: CD41, 2001).⁹ These rumours and others, such as ones regarding the charred bodies of German soldiers washing up on the English coast, came at the height of the invasion danger period in mid-September, when high tides at dawn provided optimal conditions for an amphibious landing. So it’s hardly surprising that people would fixate on every little scrap of information, no matter how dubious (and to its credit, the Manchester Guardian made no great play of the failed invasion stories, burying them way down the page). What’s more surprising is that some people still believe such things, such as the claim that a German invasion was turned back at Shingle Street, Suffolk, in late August 1940. I don’t think so.

Here’s a final tidbit. In 1940, at least, it seems that it wasn’t “Fighter Command” or “Bomber Command” — they were nearly always “the Fighter Command” and “the Bomber Command”. For example, in Churchill’s tribute to Fighter Command, which began: ‘Yesterday eclipses all previous records of the Fighter Command’.¹⁰ At some point during the war the definite article was dropped. It’s jarring at first, but soon makes sense.

So there it is: in September 1940 the Fighter Command was thrashing those useless Me 109s all over the sky, although unfortunately not doing much to stop old Hermann earn his combat pay; while below the Navy and the Home Guard were busy beating back invasion after invasion. That’s if you believe everything you read in the papers, of course!

1. Since we’re talking day fighters, technically this probably should be classified as the Battle of Britain, not the Blitz, but in some ways this is is an artificial and unhelpful distinction.
2. Manchester Guardian, 19 September 1940, p. 5. The ’something better’ was the mythical He 113.
3. I.e., Me 110s.
4. Manchester Guardian, 17 September 1940, p. 5.
5. According to James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940 (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1987, 124-5.
6. Manchester Guardian, 12 September 1940, p. 2.
7. Manchester Guardian, 14 September 1940, p. 10.
8. Ibid.
9. CD41 are worth checking out, particularly for their music and spoken world CDs relating to the First and Second World Wars.
10. The Times, 17 September 1940, p. 4.

ShareThis