The Lebaudy-built Patrie, seen above, was France's first military airship. A descendent of the Jaune, in 1906 and 1907 it carried out a number of successful proving and publicity flights, including one where it carried the prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, over Paris. Afterwards it was moved to its operational base near the fortress of Verdun. Due to a mechanical failure during a subsequent flight it had to ground in the open, far from the safety of its hangar. A gale blew up, and even one hundred and eighty soldiers were unable to hold the stricken airship down. At 8pm on 30 November 1907, the Patrie floated off into the distance, fortunately sans crew.

That was not the last of the Patrie, however. It was feared that it would drift eastwards into Germany, giving the (likely) enemy a good look at the latest French aeronautical technology. Luckily the breeze took it northwest towards Britain, France's partner in the Entente Cordiale. The Daily Mail reported that the Patrie was seen the following morning over Wales about 450 miles away, at Cardigan and at Llanelly in Carmarthen. That afternoon, the S.S. Olivine and the S.S. Captain saw the airship over the Irish sea, and then it was spotted at Larne and at Whitehouse, both near Belfast in northern Ireland. The airship actually dragged along the ground at one point, ploughing a furrow in a field at Ballysallagh, tearing a hole in a dyke, and leaving behind a number of mechanical artefacts. The War Office put a propeller under guard, presumably handing it back to its ally in due course. Then a report came in from the Lloyd's signalling station at Torr Head, the extreme north-east of Ireland, to say that 'a yellow dirigible balloon' had passed overhead at 4.05pm, 'going backwards'. About an hour later, Patrie was near Islay in the Western Isles, where it was seen by the steam trawler Lark heading north-northwest. After that there were no more reports, and we may presume that it eventually crashed and sank somewhere in the North Atlantic. Following so hard on the heels of the wreck in October of the British military airship Nulli Secundus, also in a gale (again, fortunately without casualties), some parts of the press discussed the need for 'an organization of aerial ship "docks" and stations for emergency purposes'. According to the Cornishman, the Royal Engineers' Balloon School had already prepared a map marking 'specially-chosen hollows in woods, at the foot of sheltering hill-sides, and in deep gravel-pits, where an airship may descend in case of an emergency and lie sheltered even though a gale of wind be blowing above'.

Now this is interesting to me as a very close analogue of a mystery aircraft panic, for example the false sightings of the Andree expedition balloon in Canada in 1896 and 1897. Here, though, it appears that the reports that the Patrie was floating over Wales and Ireland were real, as they follow each other in a fairly logical progression in time and space, tracing an arc from Verdun northwest to the sea beyond Ireland. They can indeed be plotted on a map, as above (though it is missing the Llanelli and the Captain sightings, and point 6 is wrong; though the Olivine's was almost the last sighting to be published it actually took place at 2pm on 1 December, that is between the sightings in Wales and the ones in Ireland, which makes sense because it took place at 'lat. 53.48N, long. 5.27W -- i.e. fully half-way between Holyhead and Dundalk, on the Irish coast', so between points 2 and 3 and not at 58° N as on this map). This episode shows that ordinary people can accurately report what they see when confronted with something unexpected in the sky, which is something worth bearing in mind given all the episodes of mass aerial misperception I've discussed here in the past. When somebody says they saw an airship where it shouldn't be, they aren't always wrong.

And yet. Not all of the reports were accurate. Here is the Daily Mail's report from Cardiff:

The few residents of Carmarthen who were astir at eight o'clock this morning witnessed the flight of an airship over the district. All agree that the cigar-shaped craft was flying at a great speed at a very great height. According to one report the county police, with the aid of marine glasses, were able to distinguish three or four occupants in the cage.

Another rumour afloat is that when the airship was over Carmarthen a carrier pigeon was released, but at such a height that it became a mere speck, and the direction in which it flew could not be seen.

Some observers claim to have seen the name La Patrie through a telescope. The airship took a very erratic course, now so low as to look almost as big as a house, and anon rising to great heights, resembling a large cigar speeding rapidly through the air. The mystery is deepened by the fact that a second airship or balloon is alleged to have been seen about the vicinity.

So. 1. Nobody was aboard the Patrie. 2. If nobody was aboard then there was nobody to release any pigeons (though perhaps some object broke loose and fell away). 3. While it can be seen in the photograph at the top of the post that 'Patrie' (not 'La Patrie') was inscribed on the envelope, the letters appear to be only a couple of feet high and it scarcely seems credible that they could be read even with a telescope. 4. Needless to say, there was only one airship!

In addition, there was another sighting of the Patrie which isn't plotted on the Wikipedia map because it was entirely false. This was in Scotland on the banks of the Clyde. Lord Blythswood, an amateur scientist with a laboratory at his estate at Erskine Ferry near Glasgow, was at this time experimenting with large box kites made of bamboo. He happened to choose the day the Patrie was adrift over the British Isles for a flight to investigate local air currents, lofting it to a height of 2000 feet where it hovered over Clydebank on the north side of the Clyde.

Attention was at once directed to the object, and the greatest excitement prevailed, everyone jumping to the conclusion that La Patrie, the missing French airship, had drifted to Scotland. In the shipyards the platers neglected their chalk and line, the smiths their anvils, the engineers their callipers -- all to stare at what they thought was the airship, which appeared to be traveling fast in a northerly direction.

No doubt was entertained of its identity, but as somehow it seemed to preserve a well-defined circuit and never to get beyond the horizon of easy vision, a newer excitement arose in the belief that it was collapsing and likely to fall at their feet. What fame for Clydebank! The Lusitania was forgotten. Alas! the usual sharp boy detected the string, and the excitement turned to laughter.

In Glasgow the afternoon papers gave a fresh vent to the excitement by announcing the arrival of the airship six miles away. The roofs of Glasgow's tallest buildings were at once utilised and telescopes were levelled, but the strongest glass, owing to the haze, failed to discover anything. Instead of allaying interest these features rather intensified it, and when the late editions of the papers were compelled to explain away their own story there was quite as much chagrin as laughter.

Setting the amused tone to one side, this account has several interesting features. 1. News that the Patrie was adrift had already reached Clydebank, presumably in the morning papers. 2. The witnesses quite confidently identified what was presumably a relatively small box kite with a much larger airship. 3. The afternoon newspapers spread the idea of an errant airship to Glasgow on the opposite bank. 4. Despite this priming, nothing was seen from Glasgow, whether airship or kite.

In the end the last flight of the Patrie, while providing a useful reminder that people didn't (always) make their airships out of whole cloth, shows that even when a real airship was involved it was still very possible for them to add their wrinkles to the fabric.

Image source: 100 Years Ago Today.

MONSTER EAR TRUMPETS FOR AIR DEFENCE

During the last years of the Great War, sound detectors played an increasingly important part in the air defences of all the belligerents. Since those days they have undergone great development. Here the emperor of Japan is inspecting the huge trumpet-like detectors that work in conjunction with the anti-aircraft guns (seen right)

This last in a series on 'Things of tomorrow' draws upon Boyd Cable, 'Future schemes of air defence', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 310-6. (There was a seventh in the series, but by another author and on a non-military subject, that of stratospheric flight.) The previous posts looked at 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', 'New horrors of air attack', 'If war should come' and 'When war does come: terrifying effects of gas attacks'.

Cable starts off a little defensively, allowing that 'it may have seemed to some readers that I have been unduly gloomy and pessimistic' in his previous articles about the threat of aerial bombardment. He doesn't think so, but here presents 'the other side of the picture'. Even so he immediately argues that the problem of defence is made more difficult by the development of blind flying at night or in bad weather 'by means of his compass and various stabilizing and automatic steering instruments'. Also,

we know it is a commonplace of commercial air routes that by wireless he can, if he is unaware of his position, communicate with his base station, and within a matter of seconds he can be told the exact spot over which he is flying [...] so far no experiments have succeeded in effectively "jamming" or "mixing" a pilot's questions and answers.

He does however note that, especially in war conditions, such flying demands high skilled pilots, and 'Casualties in the first days of intensive air raiding could not but be heavy, and those highly skilled pilots would soon be reduced in numbers'. Interceptor pilots would also take losses, but these are easier to train than bomber pilots.

Cable suggests that while Britain's island nature is disadvantageous because bombers can approach over the sea undetected, it is less of a problem than in the last war:

We have now, for instance, what we had not then, flying boats able to keep in the air or on the sea for days, so that now they can establish patrols and a chain of listening posts far out to sea to pass the word of raiders' approach.

There is also the '"pick-a-back" machine', where a flying boat carries a smaller plane on top and launches it in mid-air, allowing the latter to save fuel and extend its range:

There is now nothing to prevent a large boat or seaplane carrying one or two fast interceptor fighters far out to sea, the latter to save their fuel until they take off on their own to attack any raiders.

Along somewhat similar lines, Cable discusses the recent development of the '"motor" kite balloon', a captive balloon with a small engine for ease of deployment. The 'French Army balloon regiments' are being equipped with these and everyone else is experimenting with them -- except Britain.

It would certainly seem that they might usefully be developed to serve the purpose of carrying a fast fighter, and, while drifting for periods with engine stopped, listening with sound locators for approaching raiders. They could then loose their own fighters and call up others; or, even without a fighter attached, might act as listening outposts.

Cable then segues into a discussion of sound locators. The capabilities of these have increased in recent years, but 'this has been largely offset by the increased speed of aircraft':

They are now required to be capable of detecting an enemy who may be as much as 50 miles away, and to give more warning of impending attack than our present types with their effective range of only a quarter of that distance.

Still, they are an important part of an effective air defence system:

The locators give the defensive aircraft the line, height and direction of an enemy's flight, and the same information goes to the searchlight and anti-aircraft guns' crews. The direction of the light beams and the shell bursts are further pointers to assist the interceptors in finding the enemy. Even if the lights fail to disclose the raiders, the locators can still keep track of their position, and the lights and shells follow them to guide the interceptors to their quarry.

Balloon aprons were used in the last war and seem to have been effective in deterring German pilots from flying low enough to bomb accurately. Kite balloons might be used for something similar:

The plan is to tether a number of kite balloons at about the same height but scattered at intervals, so as to form a sort of roof over a roof. If attacking machines dive down to clear low clouds or get within good bombing height, they must run the risk of dashing into one of the K.B.'s, or the cable holding down.

Even the small chance of this happening 'will shake most pilots' nerve and make them chary of taking the risk'. And 'explosive balloons and "aerial minefields" have been spoken of for defensive purposes'.

Rather daringly, Cable admits that the 'axiom that "the bombers must get through" [sic] [...] might be changed if our ground defences had their existing obsolete equipment replaced by the latest and best sound locators, searchlights and guns'. On one night during the 1935 air defence exercises, which simulated an aerial offensive against London, around a third of the attackers were successfully intercepted. True, 'the remaining 67 per cent would have made havoc of London', but if such a loss rate could be inflicted for several nights then 'an enemy's striking power would soon be exhausted'.

The last form of defence Cable examines is the use of infrared radiation to detect aircraft in dark or in cloud. 'We have seen those "infra-red" photographs which show distinctly objects and landscape miles away beyond a barrier of mist'. Now there are reports that 'a young Londoner, Dr. E. J. Rigby', has invented a machine for this purpose:

Dr. Rigby said he was then in a position to demonstrate his fog-piercing apparatus by throwing on a small screen a clear picture of a landscape ten or more miles away, although bad visibility prevented the eye seeing more than a few yards. His apparatus would also show a scene through artificially created fog or smoke clouds. He was then working on an apparatus for the use of ships in fog, but was also experimenting with a smaller set for aircraft use. If this, or any other similar apparatus, should prove successful, the defence will score heavily.

Despite these reasons for hope, Cable concludes that even a successful air defence 'will not prevent the infliction of appalling damage and destruction of property and life'.

The air and military experts have long asserted that "the best means of defence is attack." If that be accepted, our greatest and most promising means of defence lies not in the defensive interceptor but in the possession of a tremendously powerful fleet of long-range bombers with the most highly skilled and practised pilots. The knowledge that we held such a force ready to strike might do more than deter an enemy from attacking; it might even deter him from making war.

EARS OF THE FUTURE

Perhaps the main problem of air defence is to devise mechanism [sic] which can detect and register the position of enemy raiders long before they reach their objective. The elaborate "telesimetre," seen here being tested by the French army, is an indication of future developments

IN THE DAWN

Every summer the R.A.F. try out new schemes and methods during exercises in which the squadrons engage in mock warfare. The defence of London is the main object of these operations, and these pilots on a "war zone" aerodrome are assembling at daybreak by their machines

AUTOMATIC RAIDER FINDER

The 2nd Anti-Aircraft Brigade of the R.A. is shown below during manoeuvres at Watchet, Somerset. The gun is working in conjunction with a Vickers predictor, by means of which the position of the objective is communicated electrically to dials on the gun. Since its introduction both rate of fire and percentage of hits on targets at heights between 9,000 and 10,000 feet have been greatly increased

FINDING A TARGET

The anti-aircraft defences of Britain are largely in the hands of the Territorial Army. The above photo, of a rehearsal by London Territorials, shows the co-operation of searchlights and gun crews. When enemy aircraft are reported overhead, the searchlights, working in pairs, search the night sky. Effective as the present equipment is, the future will witness remarkable developments in anti-aircraft defence

LISTENING POST

The Observer Corps, a voluntary organization of civilians enrolled as special constables, has attained a high pitch of efficiency in its important work of locating, both by sound and sight. Sensitive sound-locators, as seen below in action during the 1935 air exercises, are used by listening "spotters." New and better equipped units are shortly to be formed, particularly around London

KITE BALLOON FOR DEFENCE

This curious craft, constructed by the French, is a kite balloon with a light fuselage attached. The machine is not intended as an airship, the addition of the body with engine being for the purpose of making the balloon quickly and easily mobile without deflating and transporting it on the ground. In this page it is suggested that the "motor" kite balloon could be used for defence purposes

ARCHITECTURE FOR AIR RAIDS

If war is still to be the final arbiter of the nations, the cities of the future must be built, at fantastic expense, not as pleasant homes but as refuges against the horrors of poison gas dropped from raiding aeroplanes. A famous French architect, M. Paul Vauthier, has designed such a city and this sketch gives a grim warning of what civilization may come to

SMOKE-SCREEN DEFENCE AGAINST RAIDERS

During the Great War the Navy used smoke screens with great success to hide the movements of warships from the enemy. The discharge of smoke from aeroplanes, invented by Major Savage, was first used for sky-writing, for advertising purposes, and has now been developed into an important factor in aerial warfare. In this photograph, an army aeroplane belonging to the United States Air Force [sic] is emitting a dense smoke screen over the city of Sacramento, California, to obscure it from the view of enemy air raiders

GAS-PROOF PIGEON-COTE

During the Great War all the belligerents learned that, despite the mechanization of armies, the horse, the dog and the carrier pigeon were still of value on the battlefields, and in the future they will certainly be required for similar purposes. In Germany, where precautions against gas have been rehearsed with characteristic thoroughness, gas-proof pigeon-houses, one of which is here shown, have been devised. The pigeons live in the upper compartment when there is no danger, but when gas is about they are placed in the lower one, which is provided with anti-gas filters

Some of these photographs are very well-known. The one at the top of the Japanese sound locators is usually described as showing 'war tubas' (and cropped and low-resolution compared with this version), but here they are called 'monster ear trumpets': a more apt (if even less martial) description as their function was to detect sound, not to make it. The other sound locators shown here can also be found in many places around the internet.

Of the rest, the kite balloon (or as we, living after the Blitz, would describe it, a barrage balloon) is of the motorised variety described by Cable in the article. The gas-proof pigeon-cote seems to have been chosen at random; it's not mentioned in the article. The same is true of the drawing of the town designed to withstand air attack, but it's a fascinating image. Vauthier is either a French architect who influenced Le Corbusier, or a French general who wrote about Douhetism, or maybe they are one and the same. His basic idea seems to have been to spread buildings out and to build them high with a minimal cross-section from above; that way most bombs will fall on empty ground. It's taken from the Illustrated London News in 1934 (or maybe 1933); Ptak Science Books has more.

Paris, 20 November 1903: the ghostly form of an airship floats past an equally ghostly Eiffel Tower, before a very solid crowd of completely entranced spectators. It is Le Jaune, 'The Yellow', the first of the successful Lebaudy series of French semi-rigid airships.

The source of this photograph is a postcard sent to me by JDK (cheers!) I couldn't find a copy online so decided to post it here. There is, however, a very similar photograph on the Air & Space Magazine site which must have been taken just moments before and from almost exactly the same angle. It's also much clearer if you like that sort of thing.

Charles Kingsford Smith was and remains Australia's most famous pioneer aviator. Among his feats: the first trans-Pacific flight, in both directions in fact (1928, east to west; 1934, west to east); the first non-stop trans-Australian flight (1928); the first trans-Tasman flight (1928). It's probably fair to think of him as the Australian Lindbergh in terms of his iconic status -- and his flirtation with far-right politics (he was a member of the New Guard, an early 1930s fascist paramilitary group) -- though his entrepeneurial activties and self-promotion remind me more of Sir Alan Cobham, with his ambitious attempt (with his frequent copilot, Charles Ulm) to get into the airline business. 'Smithy' was himself knighted, in 1932; in 1953 Sydney's major airport (and hence Australia's busiest) was named after him; for thirty years his image graced the Australian twenty dollar note. Like so many of the great pioneer aviators he met an early death, in his case in November 1935 after crashing somewhere in the Andaman Sea while trying to recapture the Australia-England speed record.

All of that is well-known. But what isn't is that in 1918, Kingsford Smith witnessed a mystery aeroplane flying over the Australian coast -- what in later decades would be called a flying saucer or an unidentified flying object. I can find no reference to this incident in a quick check of three Smithy biographies (admittedly none very scholarly); as it's buried in an archive with no obvious connection to his career it's possible it hasn't been noticed before now.

Kingsford Smith enlisted in the AIF in 1915, aged 18, serving as a sapper and dispatch rider in Gallipoli, Egypt and France. In March 1917 he was commissioned in the RFC (which is to say he moved from the Australian armed forces to the British) and trained to fly; in July he was posted to 23 Squadron in France and by August had already shot down four German aeroplanes and been shot down and wounded himself. While recovering in England (where the above photograph was taken) he was awarded the Military Cross. But as his recuperation was expected to take some months he was given leave to return to Australia, arriving by March 1918.

While Kingsford Smith no doubt found Australia far more peaceful than France, as I've shown previously at this time it was undergoing a serious case of war nerves, with dozens of mysterious aircraft being reported along the coast, the majority from Victoria but with a significant number from New South Wales. These were generally presumed to be seaplanes from one or more German merchant raiders operating in Australian waters, possibly with assistance from resident foreign nationals; it took the Australian police and military some time to conclude that there weren't any aeroplanes. (In fact, they were still investigating a trickle of reports in the last week of the war.)

One of the most persistent sources of mystery aeroplane reports was Terrigal (seen above as it was in 1926), near Gosford on the NSW coast about halfway between Sydney and Newcastle:

23 March 1918: a light seen moving over the sea at 4am
5 April 1918: aeroplane noise heard around 1am
8 April 1918: strange noise heard between midnight and 1am
11 April 1918: 'a peculiar noise overhead... it sounded like a storm and there was a humming noise apparent as it died away... of about 3 minutes duration'
14 April 1918: lights seen
19 April 1918: three people report seeing aeroplanes out to sea, flashing signals, observed half an hour
23 April 1918: aeroplane heard and seen at 5.45am, flying northwest
28 April 1918: two seaplanes seen at 2am, one circled flashing signals then flew out to sea, the other flew inland and returned at daybreak
29 April 1918: ditto but triplanes this time. Possible signal observed from the ground

That's nine separate sightings in the space of five weeks. As Sergeant Morris of the Gosford police noted in his first report,

The rumour that a seaplane was seen over Sydney in connection with the German raider "WOOLF" [sic] will be remembered and this is a likely locality for a seaplane to hover and locate ships in the harbour and elsewhere.

There was even a plausible suspect in the form of Raymond Lhoist, described by Morris as someone who is 'said to be a Belgian but he is a German in fact and it is quite probable that he received the signals and carries the information to Sydney where he goes frequently' -- though a check of his papers confirmed that he was indeed Belgian.

The only problem -- and one which none of the preserved correspondence between the Terrigal police and military intelligence in Sydney and Melbourne mentions -- is that all but three of these reports involved either the Moir family or Gunner McNaughton, a returned soldier (he sometimes described as driver, presumably his current role). The very first report was made by Lily Moir, a 23 year-old woman; the fourth by her mother; the sixth by Lily Moir, her brother and McNaughton; and the last three by McNaughton alone. (The second and third were made by Mrs Newman, Terrigal postmistress, and a man named Kirkness, respectively. I haven't found who made the fifth report.) That seems suspicious to me, perhaps suggesting a series of folies à deux (or trois or whatever) where the collective belief in the reality of the mystery aeroplanes mutually reinforced each other's delusions. Or perhaps it was a hoax or other form of fabrication.

This is where Kingsford Smith came in. The idea for sending an investigator to Terrigal seems to have been made by the Director of Military Intelligence in Melbourne, though whether he specifically requested Kingsford Smith is unclear (probably not, any experienced airman would have done). Captain W. S. Hinton, head of the 2nd Military District's Intelligence Section, reported on 13 May to the Director that

In accordance with your suggestion, arrangements were made for Lieut. Kingsford Smith, R. F. C. at present on sick leave to go to Gosford. He was accompanied by Driver Macnaughton [sic].

Kingsford Smith arrived at Gosford on 6 May where he spoke with Sergeant Morris, who updated him on the various aeroplane reports (adding one about 4 weeks earlier, where Mr Wood and the whole staff and inmates of his Boy's Reformatory were 'awakened by the noise of an engine passing overhead'). The following day he went with Driver McNaughton to interview Lily Moir, who 'impressed me as being very reliable'. He and McNaughton spent that night on the beach at Terrigal. This is when Smithy saw his mystery aeroplane:

At 2.30 a.m. [8 May 1918] I saw what was extremely like a white Verey [sic] light fired from a point about 3000 feet up and a mile north of us. At the same time I saw a small black object rapidly going inland. I could hear no sound as the Surf there drowns any other local noises. I would not attach any grave importance to this episode, as I know how easily one can be deceived at night by falling meteorites, and passing birds, but I certainly think it was a machine. We were not in a position to see any answering ground light.

The following night they stationed themselves on the verandah of the Moir house, but didn't see anything unusual.

While Kingsford Smith apparently did express some doubts about McNaughton's charactor to Hinton in person:

Whilst Lieut. Kingsford Smith feels he must give credit to Driver Macnaughton's account of the seaplanes, he also stated that in small unessential matters he found Driver Macnaughton untruthful and unreliable.

he said nothing of this in his official report, where he concluded that there was something going on which warranted further investigation:

There is most certainly a foundation for all these reports, and I think that someone should be stationed in that locality (for a couple of weeks or more) who has some experience in connection with aircraft and observation.

(Signed) C. KINGSFORD SMITH
2nd. Lieutenant.
R.F.C.

According to Hinton's letter to the Director of Military Intelligence, Kingsford Smith was going to be that someone:

He will return to Gosford on Monday next [20 May 1918] and continue his observation.

However, I can't find any further mention of this and I suspect it didn't happen, as Kingsford Smith's leave was up and he was soon on a ship back to Britain, where he spent the rest of the war as a flight instructor. Nor can I find any further references to the mystery aeroplanes of Terrigal, except one: on 13 May three seaplanes were seen by none other than... Gunner McNaughton.

Was Smithy drawn into a shared delusion after spending a few days with McNaughton and the Moirs? It seems unlikely: he was appropriately cautious in drawing conclusions, and reported at least some doubts regarding McNaughton. On the other hand, the 'Verey light' and the 'small black object' could have been a meteor and a bird as he suggested; but he clearly was disposed to think they were a signal and an aeroplane, as per the prevailing theory of German raiders and spies. In the end this episode is no more than a curiosity: Kingsford Smith's sighting seems to have had no bearing on the course of the (already dying) mystery aeroplane scare and probably was soon forgotten even by himself.

Image sources: National Library of Australia, here, here and here.

N. A. J. Taylor recently asked me on Twitter if I thought the above photograph, purportedly of one of the daylight Gotha raids on London in 1917, was genuine.

I said no, due to 'Experience, intuition, lack of provenance, contemporary photographic technology. The photo has been retouched at very least.' But I'm coming around to the idea that it is real. A bit.

One problem is the ratio of the wingspans to the fuselage lengths. The Gotha G.IV had a very large wingspan for its length, almost twice as long as its fuselage: 77 feet to 40. The plan above (originally from Flight, 27 December 1917, 1380, though I got it from here). Looking at the little aeroplanes in the photograph in question, the ratio in general seems more like one to one than two to one. But the images are small, retouching might have altered the proportions, and the attitude of the aircraft could decrease the ratio (i.e. if they were banking). So that's not definitely definitive.

Another problem I had was provenance. There are a number of fake photographs of aerial combat and air raids from the First World War, as I have discussed before. Newspapers wanted to publish photos of such things, but photographic technology wasn't yet up to the task; after the war, too, there was a desire for images of the air war to illustrate books and magazines but where these weren't available they could be created.

So where did this photograph come from? The web page where it was found gives the source as a book called German Fighter Aces of World War One by Treadwell and Wood. I'm not familiar with it, but I do wonder why a book about German fighter aces would show a photo of German bombers. However I had seen it before somewhere, and it turns out I'd seen it in multiple places. It appears in Ian Castle, London 1917-18: The Bomber Blitz (Oxford and Long Island City: Osprey Publishing, 2010), 32, where the date is given as 7 July 1917 (so it's the second of the daylight Gotha raids on London) and the location is over Essex, on the return flight to Belgium. But no source is given. Those details also match Christopher Cole and E. F. Cheesman, The Air Defence of Britain 1914-1918 (London: Putnam, 1984), 263, where the source is given as the Public Record Office (as was). (They also reprint (262) diagrams of the Gotha formations from an Air Ministry 'publication' of October 1918, but it's not clear if that's their source for the photograph as well.) Cole and Cheesman do in fact consider the possibility that it isn't genuine, but conclude that this is improbable:

Newspapers generally printed crude montage pictures with aircraft scraping the rooftops, but this untidy formation is unlikely to have been faked.

Indeed, I've featured one such crude montage on this blog before:

You can see what Cole and Cheesman mean: this is far less convincing than the photograph in question here.

Getting back to the provenance, I've also found the photograph in books published much closer to the event in question. It's in Hamilton Fyfe, 'Winged killers in British skies', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 190. Here at last there is an attribution, although not a proper citation: the photograph is credited to H. M. Stationery Office and is said to be 'an actual photograph in an official War Office report'. That's also pretty much what is said in the earliest source I've been able find: Joseph Morris, The German Air Raids on Britain 1914-1918 (Dallington: Naval and Military Press, 1993 [1925]), opposite 228. And Morris certainly did have the co-operation of the War Office and the Air Ministry in writing his book.

I haven't been able to locate a citation for this War Office report, but if that's where the photograph did come from then it seems unlikely to have been faked. Not because the War Office wouldn't lie, but because it's hard to see what the point would have been. If it was a confidential report, then presumably the goal was to disseminate accurate information about the raids; perhaps a montage for illustrative purposes would have been included but surely it would have been clearly labelled as such. If it was a public report, then why would they go to the trouble of faking a cloud of German bombers in the sky? Again, presumably they would want to dampen down fear, not enhance it.

So, the photograph itself still seems suspicious, but the provenance is firmer than I had thought. What do you think?

For the sake of completeness, here's another alleged photograph of the Gotha raid of 7 July 1917:

This one most definitely was taken (or made) at the time, as it appeared in the Illustrated London News, 14 July 1917, 38. It is credited to the 'Illustrations Bureau' (presumably the newspaper's own), and the caption is:

AS THOUSANDS SAW THE ENEMY: GERMAN "GOTHA" AEROPLANES OVER THE METROPOLITAN AREA

This could be a fake too, but its unspectacular nature perhaps stands against that.

Finally, here's another photograph of the second daylight Gotha raid:

The vantage point is slightly different than the other ones here, because it was actually taken from one of the Gothas. It's held by Imperial War Museum (Q 108954) but the original source was obviously a German airman. A couple of similar photographs (one actually showing a German bomber, though that doesn't prove anything) appear in Raymond H. Fredette, The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain 1917-1918 and the Birth of the Royal Air Force (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991 [1966]. That's St Paul's in the lower left, and Finsbury Circus in the lower right.

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.

There are three main types of reports: signalling, wireless, and aeroplanes. The first is easily the largest, and consists of people seeing lights flashed from houses, from a hill top, on the coast, etc, and reporting them as suspected lights from German agents. For example, in May 1918 Mrs Clara A. Woollard of Pambula wrote that

I think it is my duty to inform you that flashlight signals were being displayed in the sky, to the west, at about eight o'clock last night.

She had seen this light on several previous occasions, and thought that it was 'as if someone were telegraphing messages by that means'. Virtually all of these reports seem to have turned out to be false alarms, often caused by people carrying hurricane lamps late at night so they could see where they were going. Most of the suspect houses turned out to be inhabited by good, solid 'Britishers'.

Nationality and ethnicity was also important in the wireless cases. These were suspected wireless installations, with a big antenna and associated plant, potentially capable of sending and receiving messages to and from -- where? Other secret agents? Ships off the coast? The Fatherland? As with the signals, it's not always clear just what the suspicion was, only that they were suspicious. But who needs something like that, anyway? Conveniently, unauthorised possession of such wireless installations was already prohibited under pre-war legislation, as was pointed out in press notices in September 1914. This led to a rash of reports from the public, which continued at a fairly steady rate until the end of the war. As late as September 1918, for example, the Provost Marshal Office of 2nd Military District investigated the concerns of Mrs Caroline H. Scott of Darlinghurst, who

is of the opinion that there is a Wireless Plant in the vicinity of her residence as she has noticed flashes & also heard the tick tacking [sic] similar to those produced by a Wireless Plant. These noises & flashes occurred about between 3 & 4.o.clock in the mornings & she considered it her duty to inform the Authorities of same.

Often there was a suspicious foreigner involved. Sometimes the wireless installations were real enough (one man was using his to carry out research into the effect of radio waves on plant growth!) but none seem to have been to have been used in espionage or subversion.

And then there were the aeroplanes. This is the smallest category in 2nd Military District's files, nineteen cases for the whole war: seven in 1914, when you might expect some war jitters, and another seven in 1918, mostly after the Hindenburg offensive on the Western Front and the reports of raiders off the coast. A very few were actual aeroplanes, generally sitting in somebody's workshop somewhere. At Hay in November 1914, V. B. Sylvander's activities were investigated by a police detective. Sylvander and his son had already built one aeroplane, which had been damaged in testing; a second one was being built but lacked an engine. Sylvander wisely proposed to give this to the government when it was finished, which perhaps influenced the detective's judgement that he was 'a loyal Britisher' despite being a 'naturalised Russian Finn'. Most others were the more usual lights in the night sky, as seen over Britain, New Zealand and Australia in 1909 and elsewhere/when.

Some were more substantial and unusual: in June 1918, Miss McCann of Beckom was sitting in her room at 1am when she 'heard the buzzing noise of an aeroplane and a ray of light shot across her bed like a searchlight and seem to be going south'. She said that it didn't sound like a motor car (though later she admitted that it might have been just that). In this case, it wasn't just the sound and the light: McCann seems to have suspected a local family of disloyalty. She mentioned to the policeman interviewing her that a 'strange man' had visited the Groth farm nearby, and it turned out that they had recently had a large box of ammunition delivered to them. Three of the family's sons, of age and medically fit, had claimed conscientious objection to military service on religious grounds. The Groth brothers were born in Australia, but their parents were from Germany, and this combined with their 'disloyal' attitude denied them the status of 'Britishers'. A number of followup investigations led to the reluctant conclusion that the Groths weren't up to any mischief (the ammunition was for hunting and pest control), but one suspects the damage to their reputation was done.

One mystery aeroplane stands out because it was actually a phantom airship: a Zeppelin seen at Young in July 1918 by W. G. Rogers, a professional photographer. In a letter to the Minister for Defence, Senator George Pearce, Rogers said that

I saw what appeared to me be [sic] an airship of the Zeppelin type due west from this town in size it appeared to be about 40ft. long but no doubt it was much larger as it was some miles distant. It was steering zig-zag course as though it was having trouble with the heavy wind which was blowing that morning.

It sank out of sight to the west at around 8am. Just what a Zeppelin would be doing at Young, more than 250 km inland from Sydney, is not clear. Rogers's account was taken seriously, but a police sergeant detailed to investigate reported that nobody else had seen the Zeppelin. Furthermore,

Mr Roger's [sic] is a very respectable resident of Young, but very near sighted and I am of the opinion that he saw a snow cloud, and believed it to be an airship.

About the time mentioned by Mr Roger's [sic] there was a strong wind blowing with rain and snow.

My favourite find, though, is the one that made me laugh inappropriately at the archive. The Captain-in-Charge of His Majesty's Australian Naval Establishments, Sydney, wrote in December 1917 to 2nd Military District's Military Intelligence Officer about a purported illegal wireless installation at St Ignatius College:

I would point out the peculiar merits of this supposed apparatus,

1. Peculiar flashes.
2. Finding imaginary earthquakes.

I would suggest it might also be applied for finding the supposed brains of the Prime Minister's correspondent.

As the writer was John Glossop, formerly commander of HMAS Sydney and victor over the raider SMS Emden in 1914, he probably had good reason to feel his time was being wasted. But scepticism didn't stop the reports of strange signals, illegal aerials, and mystery aeroplanes. Only the end of the war did that.

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).

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.

To back up a little, I didn't doubt the veracity of this story, but because I wanted to use it I went looking for a good source to cite for it. But I couldn't find it in any of the histories of Bomber Command I have to hand, which seemed odd. I did find it in histories both more general (like AJP's) and more specific (such as Frederick Taylor's book on Dresden, where he does at least say it may be apocryphal). Trawling through Google and Google Books found many retellings, some quite at variance with other versions (eg that it happened in 1940, not 1939; or that Wood said it in the House of Commons or in Cabinet), some in surprising sources (a book on the ecological impact of transportation, for example). This worried me; the story has such widespread currency and is freighted with such obvious meaning that it deserved to be subjected to a bit more rigour than is possible in the usual throwaway line.

So like any historian I tracked the story back to the primary source. A. J. P. Taylor gives a citation: 'Spears, Prelude to Dunkirk, 32'. This is Major-General Sir Edward Spears' memoir of the period July 1939 to May 1940. For most of the time after the outbreak of war Spears reprised his role in the previous war as a military liaison between the British and French. But since 1931 he had also been a Conservative MP, and latterly an Edenite anti-appeaser, and this is how he comes into the Kingsley Wood story.

After the declaration of war, Spears wrote, many MPs 'were as worried as I was that we were doing nothing by way of air attack on Germany to relieve the intolerable pressure the German Luftwaffe was exerting on Poland', particularly in view of press and diplomatic reports that open towns were being bombed (reports denied, or at least not supported, in the House of Commons). All Britain and France were doing was dropping propaganda leaflets on German cities. Spears, with the support of the Labour leader, Clement Attlee, determined to raise the matter in the House; but was headed off at the pass by Wood himself, who privately and 'in the name of the Chief of the Air Staff begged me not speak'. According to Spears, Wood told him that 'the Service Departments considered no good whatever could be achieved by air interventions and that the Poles would not be helped by it'. Spears got quite angry with the Air Minister:

how could we justify the Prime Minister's pledge that we would go to the support of the Poles immediately with all our forces, when we were not even bombing Germany?

It was ignominious, I told him, to stage a confetti war against an utterly ruthless enemy who was meanwhile destroying a whole nation, and to pretend we were thereby fulfilling our obligations.

In the end, however, Spears gave way to Wood and did not make his speech in the House.

But that's not the bit about private property. That's this bit:

I told Leo Amery of my brush with Kingsley Wood and he gave me an account of his own experience with the Air Minister which threw a really astounding light on the mentality of Munichers at war. Amery knew the Black Forest and was well aware that that vast wooded area was packed full of munitions and warlike stores. He suggested that we should immediately drop incendiary bombs on to it. It had been a very dry summer, he pointed out, and the wood would burn easily, but the rain might come at any moment and a unique opportunity might be lost, probably for ever.

Kingsley Wood turned down the suggestion with some asperity. "Are you aware it is private property?" he said. "Why, you will be asking me to bomb Essen next!"

So it turns out that we have the story only at third hand: Spears saying (after the war) that Wood told Amery that bombing the Black Forest (and Essen) was out because it was private property.

Wood died in 1943, so wasn't able to give his own version when Spears published his memoirs in 1954. Nor does he seem to have kept a diary. Amery was still alive, though; and did keep a diary. In its published form, that diary mentions Amery's discussion with Wood on 5 September about bombing 'Essen or even set[ting] fire to German forests', but says nothing about private property:

In the coffee room I tackled Kingsley Wood on this. He was very stuffy and evidently has been responsible for all this, on some mistaken notion that we are winning American sympathy, and forgetting that we are doing nothing nothing really to help the Poles.... Went away very angry.

Amery's editors discuss the private property story, but without offering an opinion on it. However, they do quote Amery's recollections of the episode in a letter written in 1954 after having read Spears:

I am not sure that Spears has got the wording right. But I did talk to Kingsley Wood in the first two or three days of the war about setting fire to the Black Forest, and I think I also mentioned the fact that they had munition dumps there, though my main argument was to deprive them of timber. I cannot remember whether he spoke about it being private property, but if he did it way well have been in order to put me off the fact that the French were desperately anxious to have nothing to do with bombing till their own anti-aircraft defences were better, while our own people were a bit of the same school of thought. What I do remember was that I was very indignant for it seemed to me essential on moral grounds, if on no others, that we should try and do something to help the Poles.

So, to recap: Amery himself was (in 1954) doubtful about Spears' version (in 1954) of what Amery said (in 1939) that Wood said (in 1939). I think this means we should be doubtful too. The story about Sir Kingsley Wood not wanting to bomb German private property should be retired, or at least have a big warning sign fixed to it.

That it has been floating around for so long, apparently unchallenged, points to the continuing influence of the Churchillians in the historiography of the Second World War (Gilbert, for example, is Churchill's leading biographer; Piers Brendon was Keeper of the Churchill Archives). Wood was one of Chamberlain's men, a 'Municher' as Spears put it, and therefore immediately suspect: once an appeaser, always an appeaser. Never mind that it was during Wood's time as Air Minister that British aircraft production first outstripped Germany's. And never mind that Churchill himself made Wood his Chancellor of the Exchequer, a more important role than Air Minister (or Lord Privy Seal, which Chamberlain had moved him to), and kept him there during the war's darkest years (he was responsible for PAYE, by the way). The story is just too good not to repeat: it affirms what we 'know' about the Chamberlainites and their purported inability and/or unwillingness to fight Germany.

But, given that historians of Bomber Command and/or British strategy during the Bore War don't seem to like the story, presumably there's no evidence for any similar arguments being made by Wood or anyone else in Cabinet or the Air Ministry. On the contrary, it is well-established that at the outbreak of war, Bomber Command was ordered not to attack targets inside Germany, partly for fear of provoking reprisal air raids against Britain, partly to conserve Bomber Command's limited resources, but mostly because of concerns about the effect on neutral, and more particularly American, opinion, should the RAF start killing civilians.

Guilty Men never die; only their reputations.

Image source: Test & Research Pilots, Flight Test Engineers (Wood is in the middle of the group standing in front of the Blenheim).

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.

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.

On 16 March, most of Australia's big daily newspapers featured prominently a story that an officer of the German commerce raider Wolf, which had been terrorising merchant vessels in the south-west Pacific, had boasted that its 'seaplane flew over Sydney Harbour early one morning and that they knew the disposition of shipping there'. (The Wolf's seaplane, a Friedrichshafen FF.33 nicknamed Wölfchen, 'little wolf', is shown above.) If true, this would have taken place in July 1917 and would be the first time a hostile aircraft had reached Australian skies. The Minister for the Navy, Joseph Cook -- a former prime minister and an ardent pro-conscriptionist -- was dubious however, noting that 'the German, throughout the course of this war, had proved himself a frightful liar'. He did venture, however, that it might be a good thing if the Germans came back in greater force:

Perhaps a few planes over Sydney dropping bombs would help Sydney to visualise the actualities of war, and stimulate recruiting [...] At the present time, it was humbug to talk of peace. We must wait until Germany was soundly beaten. We should be acting war, thinking war, and dreaming war.

But just a few days later the German armies launched a massive offensive in France. The Allied lines sagged under the strain. All of a sudden, far from Germany being soundly beaten it looked like it might actually win the war.

Now, it would be convenient for my narrative if, after the news about the Wolf's seaplane flying over Sydney and the dramatic change in Allied fortunes in Europe, people began to imagine hostile aircraft in the sky. Reports of mystery aircraft did increase greatly after then, but there were in fact a few earlier ones from New Zealand (and possibly some from Australia, much earlier; see below).

The first was reported in the Nelson Colonist on 2 March. At 7am the previous day, 'A lady who was bathing at Tahuna [...] saw two seaplanes quite distinctly', over Tasman Bay.

They were flying together near the surface of the water, and then separated, one going in the direction of the eastern hills. She watched this one until it was lost in the clouds. She then endeavoured to locate the other, but it had disappeared.

Also noted was a rumour that 'a few days ago [...] a seaplane had been seen in the Sounds, but the story was scouted', i.e. dismissed. The 'Canterbury headquarters office of the Defence Department of the group commander at Nelson' investigated these reports of 'enemy seaplanes', but 'seriously discounted the story as improbable'.

On 6 March, the Christchurch Press said that

What appeared to be an aeroplane with lights was seen by several people in the city yesterday evening between 7 o'clock and 7.15. It seemed to be travelling in a south-westerly direction, at a rate estimated at something like 20 miles an hour, and was at a considerable height. To some, at first sight, it looked like a planet, but its fairly rapid movement dispelled that idea. Others surmised that it was a fire balloon, but to other observers it looked like an aircraft under control. It seemed to pass along the edge of a dark bank of cloud in the southern sky, and was finally lost to sight.

The Aviation School at Sockburn said it that it was not one of their machines, which anyway were not used for night flying. This prompted a reader to write in to the Press to ask

if your readers have seen the occasional visit of a well-lighted aeroplane late at night south-west of Christchurch? Repeatedly, during the moonlight cloudless nights lately, the members of our household have watched this visitor, and towards morning apparently as far south as the Ninety-mile beach it was seen distinctly. If not a Sockburn aeroplane, what was it?

At this point the mystery aeroplanes disappeared for a few weeks, or at least I can't find any reference to them. They next turn up on 21 March, across the Tasman in Victoria:

While on duty near Nyang on Thursday, Constable Wright, while awaiting assistance to get a car out of the stiff sand, observed two aeroplanes flying very high pass almost due westwards over the route of the railway line from Ouyen to Adelaide. No notification had been received of any projected flight. The day was very clear, and the constable says that he distinctly saw the glint of the machines in the sunshine.

(Note that this is a daylight sighting, quite unusual for mystery aircraft.) A few days later, another mystery aeroplane was seen back in New Zealand:

Reports were received in Whakatane last night [26 March] that an aeroplane had been seen during the day hovering over Taneatua, nine miles from Whakatane, and the vicinity. Mr. McGougan, of Opouriao, is said to have observed the flight of the aeroplane, which is said to have lifted from the direction of Whale Island, and to have taken a westerly course over the township of Taneatua, towards the Urewera Country. Two other men, employed on Mr. P. Keegan's station, have stated that their attention was drawn by a buzzing noise, such as would be made by the flight of a powerful aeroplane. The report of the appearance of the machine was sent round by telephoned to the inhabitants of the district.

However, this was apparently a hoax:

The Hon. T. M. Wilford, Minister of Justice, told the Christchurch Sun that the Commissioner of Police had reported to him that enquiries had been made into the story. The particular individuals who were supposed to have seen an aeroplane had been interviewed, and not one of them had heard or seen the alleged aeroplane.

If nothing else, that the police and the military both investigated mystery aeroplane sightings in New Zealand shows that the government, at some level, thought they were plausible and credible.

As I started this post with Cook's scepticism about the Wolf's seaplane over Sydney Harbour, I'll end it with some scepticism of his, er, scepticism. The Poverty Bay Herald in New Zealand actually printed this story on 30 March, filed at Melbourne on 19 March, but as no attribution is given and I can't find it elsewhere, this seems the appropriate place for it. Intriguingly, it notes rumours of mystery aeroplanes seen in Victoria late in 1917:

One Victorian member of the House of Representatives stated to-day that during the conscription campaign it was stated several times from the platform in the east end of Victoria that a coach-driver in Gippsland and some other persons had seen an aeroplane circling over the country at a great height.

The implication was that the story of the Wolf's seaplane and the Gippsland reports of a mystery aeroplane somehow reinforced each other. In fact, Wolf had been in Gippsland waters at the beginning of July 1917, when it laid mines off Gabo Island, but that was several months before the conscription campaign began, so Wölfchen couldn't have been responsible.

There's more to come. Next I'll look at April, which is when the real fun begins: Victoria has a rash of mystery aeroplane sightings, Australia has an invasion (?) scare, and New Zealanders poke gentle fun at their bigger neighbour.

Image source: Wikipedia.