RAIN OF BOMBS

Milan's wonderful cathedral is here shown under a rain of dummy bombs dropped by 80 aeroplanes during recent manoeuvres of the Italians. To make the display more impressive and to ascertain the results with more certainty, luminous "bombs" were used and fell in a fiery rain upon the city -- a dire portent of future terrors

The images in this post are from Boyd Cable, 'The doom of cities', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 96-8. It was Cable's second article in a series on 'Things of tomorrow'. The text doesn't actually connect with the illustrations very well. Cable's main point is given away in the title, that in the next war cities will be ruthlessly destroyed from the air, since 'the murderous slaughter of non-combatants' is the most effective way to force a nation to surrender. While he notes that some experts are sceptical of this (Captain Turner, late of Woolwich Arsenal, Lord Castlerosse, Frederick Handley Page), he argues that 'they are flatly contradicted both by the known facts of the last war and by the preparations which we know have been made in anticipation of the next great struggle'.

Today, and as far as we can see into the future, War first of all means Air War; and Air War spells, literally and actually, the "doom of cities."

IF GAS BOMBS COME

Registered air raid shelters are one of the precautions provided in Berlin against the dangers of air raids. During practice raids on Berlin these shelters are brought into use, and here mothers and children are seen gathered in a bomb and gas proof dug-out while while the officer in charge reads aloud the official instructions to civilians in time of air raids

REALISM IN BERLIN

Rehearsals of air raid precautions in Berlin have been carried out with characteristic German thoroughness and realism. This photograph shows a motor-car which has actually been set on fire to show what disasters might occur in an actual raid

STAGING DESTRUCTION

Another example of such thoroughness is seen in this photograph showing debris piled high in a street in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin as a grim warning of what might happen if a house were struck by a bomb. But Berlin has never been bombed and no thoroughness in mock destruction can reproduce the panic of the people in a real air raid

On the illustrations, the implication is that since Britain's potential enemies are taking civil defence seriously, Britain should too. In fact, British civil defence had only just begun a few months before this article would have been published (in July 1935, when the first ARP Circular was issued to local governments by the Home Office), so it was in its very early stages. Italy and Germany had been holding quite public civil defence exercises for some years, so it's not surprising that they would be held up as exemplars. But it is surprising (or at least it was to me) to then discover that during the Second World War Italy's ARP, in particular, was actually quite primitive compared with Britain's. (See Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp and Richard Overy, eds, Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945 (London: Continuum, 2011.) The British certainly made up for lost time.

The images in this post are from Boyd Cable, 'Death from the skies', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 20-4 (see below).

The article itself is a short story describing an air raid in the next war. I won't summarise it in detail, but it argues for the futility of both air defence and civil defence. The RAF's interceptors never even encounter the enemy bombers (in part because they are stealthy thanks to their silenced engines, only 20% as loud as normal aircraft engines). Though the populace has been drilled well and resists panic, at least at first, they are too vulnerable. A first wave of bombers uses high explosives to block the streets with rubble, making it impossible for fire engines to pass; the second drops incendiaries which set the city ablaze and, crucially, force civilians out of their shelters; and the final wave drops poison gas, which starts killing the now-exposed people on the streets. Now the panic starts and the mob flees, their suffering increased by strafing raiders. The RAF now has its chance, but the city is doomed...

"Proof enough of what we've said so long," growled the one [Air Staff officer]. "Defence as such is a wash-out. Attack is the only useful form of defence."

"If we can hit them harder and faster and oftener than they can hit us, we win," said the other. "We can do it, too, if we have more bombers -- men and machines -- than they have."

"Yes -- if," said the other wearily. "That's what we were arguing as far back as the first R.A.F. expansion scheme in -- what as it -- 1935 and '6, wasn't it?"

THINGS TO COME?

H.G. Wells, in his pre-war fantasy, "The War in the Air," proved himself an astonishing prophet, a fact that makes these "stills" from his film "Things to Come," depicting an air raid in the next war, as disturbing to consider as they are terrible to look upon.

REHEARSAL FOR DEATH

Anti-air raid drills on a mass scale have become a feature of German life. This photograph shows an elaborately staged rehearsal of a gas-bomb attack as it might affect civilians, held in the Technical High School at Charlottenburg, near Berlin.

APPREHENSION...

In "Everytown," a city of the very near future, a crowd watch and strain their ears for the first signs of approaching enemy aircraft; an A.A. gun is ready for action. The photograph is a "still" from H.G. Wells's film, "Things to Come," and though, were war to come, the street would be deserted and lights out, it suggests the atmosphere of apprehension.

... AND THEN INFERNO

In vivid and horrible contrast to the scene in the previous page are these two further impressions of a city's doom, the first representing the street a few moments only after the raid commenced, the second the same street the following day. Though again the limitations of the film studio have perhaps happily prevented the full frightfulness from being shown, there is enough of horror to suggest the fate that may overtake troops and civilians alike in the next war.

Actually, the corresponding scene in Things to Come wasn't set the next day; or at least there's no indication it's not part of the air raid sequence itself.

NIGHTMARE OF THE FUTURE

This reproduction of a German artist's idea of a scene in London during an air raid in the next war forms in all probability an all too lamentably accurate forecast. It has been suggested in responsible quarters that 100 aeroplanes could stifle a great city with a gas cloud that would rise many yards from the earth, an idea even more terrifying than the though of high-explosive bombs.

War in the Air was a partwork issued weekly, costing 7d. The first issue, in which this article would have appeared, came out on 7 November 1935, a few days before Armistice Day; once complete, all the issues were collected together in a bound volume (which is what I have) around the middle of 1936.

Boyd Cable was the pseudonym of Ernest Andrew Ewart, a Boer War veteran and newspaper correspondent during the First World War. I'm not aware of any specific expertise he might have had in aviation outside of his war experience, though he did write several books with suggestive titles: Air Men o'War (really?), The Flying Courier, Air Activity, The Soul of the Aeroplane: the Rolls-Royce Engine (okay, that one's particularly suggestive). He wrote a number of other 'Things of Tomorrow' stories in like vein for War in the Air, which I'll discuss in future posts.

The editor, Sir John Hammerton, was the doyen of partworks; Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopedia sold 12 million copies, and I suspect the wartime The Great War:The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict and the 1933 A Popular History of the Great War (among other works) were highly influential in shaping the memory of the First World War. (Dan Todman in The Great War: Myth and Memory suggests that these and similar partworks have been neglected by historians, just what I was thinking!) War in the Air also devoted a lot of space to that war, but it was also explicitly framed as a warning about the next war, as the advertisement above, from Daily Express, 7 November 1935, 4, shows:

A Book of Vital Importance to every man, woman and child in the British Empire, called into being by the most urgent problem of our time

WAR IN THE AIR, while brilliantly recording the stirring story of the Past, is mainly concerned with the Future and this, the first publication to deal with the subject in its entirety, gives a vivid picture of the dread menace of aerial warfare [...]

THIS is no mere book of thrills and startling pictures, it is a living, vital thing that ought to enter into your life and help you the better to bear your part in the most urgent need of our time -- the need to make Britain as powerful in the Air as in times gone by she was dominant at sea.

Amidst the scaremongering there's a very hard sell going on here, and not a little hyperbole too ('the most important and significant publication issued in this country for a generation'!) But mixing profit and patriotism never did any harm.

Airmindedness is a word which gets bandied around a lot these days -- okay, not actually a lot, but it's not just me either. But I think it's too broad a concept; at the very least, it needs to be divided into positive airmindedness and negative airmindedness. I mostly write about negative airmindedness. This more or less is the attitude 'Aviation is vitally important to the nation because it is incredibly dangerous'; the previous post is a good example of this. In Britain, I would argue, this was the predominant form of airmindedness in Britain between the wars, due to the perceived danger of a knock-out blow from the air. But mixed in with that there was also positive airmindedness: 'Aviation is vitally important to the nation because it is incredibly beneficial'. (Before 1914 this was stronger, though the phantom airship panics would suggest that even then negative airmindedness held sway.) Above is an example, a 1926 London Underground poster by Montague B. Black.

LONDON 2026 A.D. -- THIS IS ALL UP IN THE AIR
TO-DAY -- THE SOLID COMFORT OF THE UNDERGROUND

It presents a vision of London a hundred years' hence, the far-off year of 2026, drawing on the futurism of aviation to sell the (sub)mundane transport of today. (Airmindedness was very often about the potential of aviation than its reality, the future rather than the present.)

The sky is full of exciting promises: autogyro airtaxis! Airships to Australia! A London Bridge Air Depot! These are all good things (except if you value London's architectural heritage, perhaps).

But as I say, this kind of positive airmindedness is not typical of Britain. I think it is safe to say that it was much more typical of the United States, for example, a reflection of that nation's more optimistic attitude towards technology in this period. That's why when talking about airmindedness it's critical to pay attention to the national context: as brilliant as Joseph Corn's The Winged Gospel is, for example, it would be a mistake to think its portrait of positive American airmindedness applied to Britain where negative airmindedness held sway. Different countries had different forms of airmindedness at different times.

I would add one caution: the distinction between positive and negative airmindedness is not quite identical to that between civil and military aviation. For example, military aviation can be seen as positive if you believe that it will deter war or end them quickly and with a minimum of bloodshed (AKA 'the bomber dream'); and civil aviation can be seen as negative if you believe that they can be quickly converted into bombers and used in a knock-out blow (AKA 'the commercial bomber'). It's all in the context.

Additional image source: The Retronaut.

In June 1936, Flight published a short story entitled 'If, 193-? A conjectural story'. It's interesting as an example of an air force view of the next war. That is, for the RAF it goes pretty much according to plan: the enemy's attempt at a knock-out blow against Britain fails, whereas the RAF plays a key part in Britain's victory. The author and illustrator, H. F. King, was only 21 or so when this story was published; in July 1940 he became a pilot officer in the RAF, and after 1945 wrote a number of books about aeroplanes (including a couple of entries in the authoritative Putnam series). I don't know what his relationship to the RAF was at this point, but he seems to have been pretty well-informed. Or perhaps he just read his Flight cover to cover every week.

The situation is as follows:

Through indefensible aggression Eurland had secured a number of Continental bases, the nearest being not more 400 miles distant from the English coast. It was apparent that the enemy intended to push his way toward the coast and to acquire additional aerodromes from which to operate all manner of aircraft, including his short-range fighters.

One of the few characters in the story, a planespotting young ship's engineer (perhaps modelled on the author himself) muses that it was 'Funny to be thinking about war with Eurland, of all countries. Still, there was no accounting for the machinations of the politicians'. The reader should NOT identify this 'Eurland' with any real Germany, as an editorial comment makes clear. Did I say 'Germany'? Sorry, I meant 'country'.

THIS story is not intended as a forecast. Indeed, any mention of politics, foreign countries or exact period have purposely been omitted. Rather it is intended to tell something of what might be expected should Great Britain be attacked from the air after her Royal Air Force has been made stronger than it is to-day.

This last sentence gives the game away: the story is an argument for the continuation of RAF rearmament (i.e. the one triggered by German rearmament), which had begun only a year or so earlier. King has a paragraph on how expansion has fared by the fateful year of 193-:

Some of the fighter units were still flying the Gauntlet. More were using the four-gun Gladiator and the improved Fury. The Hawker monoplane was just beginning to percolate into the Service and threatened to turn all fighter tactics topsy-turvy. We had scores of Blenheims, Battles, and Wellesleys, in addition to the obsolescent Hinds and Ansons. Our heavy bombers included the Heyford and Hendon (both due for replacement), the Whitley, and various types of more modern design.

'None of these' latter, King remarks, 'bore any trace of the slackening in the pace of bomber development during 1933, when the British Government recommended restrictions on the all-up weight of bombing aircraft', presumably referring to Britain's proposals at the World Disarmament Conference.

While Eurland's ground forces are advancing towards the coast, its bombers 'do their utmost to terrorise London'. Without air bases closer to Britain than 400 miles away, they must attack without fighter escort. Ten squadrons of twin- and four-engined bombers take off at midday and arrive over the Channel about 2pm. There they are met by the RAF:

the Gladiators and Furies had torn into the enemy formations on their way to London. Of the machines which had reached the Metropolis the majority had released their bombs south of the river. Whether by accident or judgement, a complete salvo fell in Kingston not many hundred yards from the Hawker factory. Three hundred dead were reported from the suburbs, and a quarter that number from the city. A number of large fires were started [...]

'London trembled at the thought of the night', but has protection in the form of 'night fighters, anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, the sound locators, and the Observer Corps'. Trawlers and destroyers reported the passage of enemy aircraft overhead, as did the yeomen of England:

Somewhere in Kent a little band of villagers -- one of many -- sworn in as Special Constables, took up their vantage points to wait for the raiders they knew must come and to report their height and direction. There was the parson, farmers and the baker, each inwardly thrilled that he was taking part in defending this, his country. As the schoolboys on the village green shouldered their bats and stumps and chattered off into the dusk, a car hummed up the hill and pulled into the roadside, and the constable started forward to open the door for the rubicund squire, who eased himself out on to the grass and snapped at his spaniel to camouflage his excitement.

Such scenes were common all over south-eastern England [...]

The information supplied by all these sources suggests that five waves of Eurland bombers were coming up the Thames for London. Eighty fighters (Gauntlets, Gladiators and Demons) are sent up to patrol Essex and Kent at 12,000 ft. One type in particular has some success:

The Gladiators represented the last of the dog-fighters -- highly manœuvrable biplanes in a class developed by Great Britain to a higher pitch than by any other power. Their spectacular tactics, however -- utilising incredible dives, zooms and turns were soon to be rendered obsolete with the advent of the 300 m.p.h. fighters, which showed that aerial tumbling could be performed only at comparatively low speeds. Anyone attempting to defy the laws of nature was whisked into temporary oblivion by "g" -- a force of unbounded power unleashed by the slightest movements of the hands.

But many bombers get through to London:

A large percentage of the projectiles contained gas, for which London was barely ready, but it was chiefly the high-explosive bombs which made that night so devilish that even the destroyers were stunned by the horror of their handiwork.

Even so, 'It would take many a night's bombing to reduce London to the heaps of ruins talked about so glibly in the pre-war Press'.

And what of Britain's own bombers? The heavies are held back until the enemy munition stores are located, but as soon as the first Eurland raid is detected, the RAF launches immediate 'reprisals' -- not against the enemy's cities but its airfields, so that 'in the event of their return, the enemy squadrons should be unable to recognise their aerodromes'. This is a job for the Blenheims whose 'superlative speed and medium-weight bomb load place them in a class which was much to be desired'. The eight Blenheim squadrons actually pass the first enemy raiders over the Channel, but neither side 'dared deviate one degree from its set course, for an engagement would have ruined any chance of success in its primary mission'. They continue at high speed towards the Eurland frontier, there meeting enemy fighters:

They would have to be good to break the Bristol formation. What luck. Fanhar 34s. No more than 250 flat out -- if that. But plenty to cope with. There must have been fifty of them. And he was the bull's-eye. Funny. Here he was leading a British force in the first aerial battle since 1918, and all his duty required of him was to open the throttle a bit wider.

Then a pneumatic drill got to work on his windscreen and instrument board. It danced around gaily, shattering the glass and clipping fragments from the casings. A boost gauge gone; a rev. counter....

Eight of the Blenheims are shot down and about the same number of Fanhars, meaning that the defenders had about twice the loss rate as the attackers. The Blenheims do their job, as one of the aircrew reflects: 'the personnel of certain squadrons, in the somewhat questionable event of their return, would go without their tea'.

After the first day, the air war repeated the same patterns but with less intensity. Eurland's 'Bombers tried for dockyards, factories, aerodromes' but find it difficult to penetrate inland.

They learned respect for the "Archies" and searchlights in the darkness of the suburbs; for the Furies which seemed to leap at them from the ground; for the incredibly fast Hawker monoplanes which showed themselves more frequently and chased them back to the coast.

For their part, the RAF's bombers had to concentrate on the ground war: 'although they managed to delay the advance of the Eurland forces toward the coast, they failed to stem it entirely'. After two months of war, Eurland arrives at the coast, taking 'four bases just across the Channel from which the fastest of her fighters could be over English soil in fifteen minutes'. The RAF harasses the airfield construction (using Hinds) and makes 'a great concerted effort to wipe out some of the main munition factories'. But it also becomes aware of rumours that Eurland

planned to follow up a period of intensive bombardment on the coastal districts of England by landing troops from a fleet of warships and commandeered liners said to be assembling at a port about 400 miles. Although there was little case to fear him on the sea, it was deemed advisable to send a reasonably strong force to reconnoitre the harbour and at the same time to inflict all possible damage on the shipping.

This operation is carried out by Singapore flying boats and Heyford bombers at dawn (see the illustrations above):

Out of the early morning mists swept the green and silver armada and, by good fortune, caught the entire harbour unprepared. As the Heyfords arranged themselves for their attack they seemed to give the observers in the Singapores just time to note the appearance of the target in its entirety. Then salvos crashed into quays, warehouses and through the thin, unarmoured decks of merchant ships ranged alongside. If ever a plan existed to use that fleet for the invasion of England an extensive revision of the programme was necessary.

The enemy fighters find it difficult to engage the Singapores skimming low over the water's surface, as they are unable to attack from below. The British bombers return home without loss.

The RAF now has the upper hand over Eurland's air force; apparently its counterforce strategy has paid off. Indeed, the war is soon over:

The turning point of the war was a week's merciless bombardment in all weathers by British machines on the big Eurland centres. Day and night, bombers of every type flew out over the Channel, to return, perhaps, after a few hours to rearm and fly off again. On one occasion a squadron of Wellesleys penetrated so far inland that it found the depot which it was to bomb almost completely lacking in defence against air attack.

One evening a squadron of Battles returning from a raid reported much less opposition than was usual. That same night, when well on its way to the target, a squadron of Whitleys was recalled by wireless. And that signified only one thing.

'If, 193-?' is interesting as prediction. Based on the aircraft is use one might pick 1938 as the 'actual' year. But in some ways it's 1940, when Germany advanced to the Channel coast in a few weeks, took aerodromes within fighter range of southern England and began to prepare an invasion force. In most ways, of course, it's not (and one could just as easily say it's 1934, when the Army got money for a Field Force to secure the Low Countries against their occupation and use as a launch site for a knock-out blow, or 1909, when bolts from the blue were all the rage). It seems odd now to read that fast monoplane fighters (the not-yet-Hurricane and the largely unknown Spitfire) would make dogfights a thing of the past; but biplanes are more manoeuvrable in general, and without much experience to go on it wasn't an absurd idea. The special constables/Observer Corps thing, with its popular basis, seems a bit like an airminded Home Guard; though the idealised vision of village life is hardly Tom Wintringham.

As I said, King's scenario pretty much is as the RAF would have written it; some of the episodes even sound like they were inspired by certain of the Hendon set pieces, and it seems a bit unsporting that the British bombers fare are able to press home their attacks in the teeth of air defences when the enemy bombers are not. I'm not sure how closely the idea that counter-bombing aerodromes and aircraft factories in retaliation for a knock-out blow corresponded to actual RAF doctrine; but it was widely described to the public as such in the 1930s. It certainly avoided thorny questions about the morality of bombing cities; and King is noticeably coy on this point when it comes to describing the effects on civilians of British bombing of Eurland's 'centres'. 'If, 193-?' is a relatively rare attempt to imagine the next war in a way that didn't scare the hell out of its readers. But remember that proviso: if. If the RAF continues to expand. P. R. C. Groves and other pro-rearmament writers who did try to scare the hell out of their readers did so by envisaging a world where the RAF was not big enough. King was really just showing the other side of the same coin.

The seventh RAF Display was held on Saturday, 3 July 1926. By now it was, as Flight noted, 'amongst the foremost of the functions of the London social season'. Their Majesties the King and Queen were in attendance, along with representatives of three other royal houses (including the King, Queen, Infante and Infanta of Spain, possibly drawn by the appearance of the Cierva autogyro), 'Several Indian Princes', nearly one in three of the combined Houses of Parliament, and about 150,000 less exalted guests. (The graphic above shows the growth of 'Miss Popularity Hendon' since the beginning.) The main feature of the day was massed formation flying: at one point, six fighter squadrons comprising fifty-four aircraft in total were in the air. The set-piece seems to have suffered by comparison. Flight's description seems rather muted when compared to previous years:

After this came the Set Piece -- during which the Royal Party made a tour of inspection of the machine park. The "Story" this year was the combined attack on a hostile aerodrome by fighters and day bombers. It commenced with a low bombing attack with light bombs by the fighters, which followed up with a machine-gun attack to silence the ground defences. Next came along, higher up, the day bombers, with the fighters above them in attendance. The bombers then very effectively finished off the aerodrome and previously-damaged aircraft.

That's all; you'd need to read the photo captions to even find out that the aircraft involved were Gloster Gamecocks and Fairey Fawns. This year's Pathé newsreel also did not feature the set-piece very prominently, though that may be because the surviving copy looks like unedited footage (the action starts around ten minutes in):

Perhaps the 'Story' was lacking? A straightforward attack on an enemy aerodrome lacks the drama of, say, the rescue of a beleaguered garrison. And the apparent lack of a named enemy probably didn't help either: the previous time the set piece featured an aerodrome it was clearly a German one, but this is now the Locarno era and it wouldn't do to pick on Germany. Then again, the RAF organisers may have wanted to downplay the set-piece this year for some reason; unusually they scheduled another event afterwards (a competition between flight instructors representing RAF flying schools) which was itself followed by the arrival of the first night bombers to finish a 500-mile cross-country air race which had begun earlier in the day. If the set-piece was intended to be the climax to the Display it was poorly placed in the programme.

Maybe I wasn't the only one to think so, because in 1927 the set piece was back to its usual form. In a pre-show commentary, F. A. de V. Robertson noted that 'advance stories of [the set-piece] have aroused the indignation of various bodies who decline to believe that non-Europeans could ever display unkindness towards missionaries', but predicted that the crowd will 'none the less enjoy the banging of the guns and bombs, and the glorious flare-up of the village of the disappointed gourmets'. Robertson may have got his story wrong, or perhaps the RAF bowed to its critics, for on the day (Saturday, 2 July) the set-piece seems to have been slightly different: the scene is 'the Eastern village of Hunyadi Janos, in Irquestine' but there are 'European settlers' in it alongside the indigenous inhabitants. Irquestine sounds like Iraq plus Palestine, both areas under British control, but the name of the village suggests Eastern Europe. Perhaps something can be read into the fact that that Hunyadi was a great (European and Christian) commander who held off the (Islamic) armies of the Turks.

Anyway, the Europeans in Hunyadi Janos come under attack for some reason:

as the white women and children (quite healthy youngsters, the latter) escaped into the open, No. 12 Squadron (Fox bombers) flew over from Andover and commenced a repeated series of attacks on the village and natives.

As 'the Europeans, hard pressed by the pretty-coloured natives, were starving', provisions are dropped to them from DH.9as via parachute.

While the Foxes continued to bomb the village -- by now well alight, even to the "mud" fort -- three "Queen Victorias" (as per loud speaker) arrived on the scene, deplaned reinforcements with machine guns, emplaned the women and children, and flew off with them to a place of safety. The sounding of the "Cease Fire" by R.A.F. trumpeters, and the departure of Their Majesties marked the end of a perfect day.

British Pathé this time featured the set-piece prominently in their Hendon newsreel:

So it was both an exciting drama and served as the end of the day's entertainment. Interestingly, it did have a competitor in the form of a mock 'air battle or daylight attack on London', which Flight described as 'splendidly "staged," and immensely thrilling'. The bombers (DH9as and Hyderabads) did not get through the Grebe fighter defences. Advance publicity for Hendon (in the form of a newsreel -- check out the special effect searchlights!) promised that 'The supreme thrill will be an "Aerial Battle in the defence of London"' and showed aircraft flying at night, so perhaps this is further evidence of a late change to the programme.

I don't think the above was official advertising for the ninth RAF Display: it doesn't have the date, Saturday, 30 June 1928, on it, which would be pretty poor event planning. It's on the cover of Flight's own souvenir programme which formed part of the issue published just before the Display. They clearly went to a lot of trouble over this (there are large photographs of all the aircraft involved, one to a page, so that spectators can identify what they are looking at), and it was doubtless their highest-selling issue of the year. Hendon by now was the biggest event in the airminded calendar, even if crowds seem to have plateaued at 150,000.

The bombing attack on London was repeated this year, though Flight doesn't describe it as such in its account. Perhaps that's because, as Robertson noted before the event, that the air defence exercises held around and over London the previous summer had shown the public that their defenders were all too easy to evade.

In any case, the actual set-piece received star billing, even if it didn't quite live up to its advance publicity. This was, as seen above, a mock attack on an oil refinery. So this immediately tells us we're back in the realm of total war, rather than air control. The role of Fleet Air Arm aircraft seems to have been bigger than in the previous naval-themed set-pieces, suggesting that co-operation has trumped substitution, for now. (Although the FAA was still part of the RAF.)

An oil refinery containing the enemy's supply of fuel was the objective of a British aircraft carrier, which despatched ships' fighters (Fairey "Flycatchers") to attack the adjoining anti-aircraft defences so as to disorganise them whilst the bombing machines arrived. An enemy observation balloon sighted them and gave warning, but it was attacked and shot down in flames, the observer, "Miss November," descending by parachute.

Sadly it seems that the burning balloon set the refinery on fire before the bombers could do it,

but the tanks themselves still required annihilating, and when the Fairey III.F reconnaissance machines arrived from the aircraft carrier they were partly blown up. D.H.9a's from a shore base then appeared, dropped their loads, and the whole destruction was thoroughly and neatly completed.

While in some ways this is a reversion to the aerodrome set-piece of 1926, at least there is a bit more of a narrative, and some human interest in the form of 'Miss November'. Although I must say I don't understand this reference. Why a female observer in the balloon? Why is she called 'Miss November'? Maybe it is meant to be a hint that the enemy in the set piece is the Soviet Union: I'm thinking of the Women's Battalions formed in Russia in 1917, though they were not Bolshevik units, and that the October Revolution took place in November in the Gregorian calendar. But maybe I'm reading too much into too little; it's probably just some obscure pop-cultural reference which would be obvious to all then and nobody now.

I recently said that I've been meaning to write about the spectacular and dramatic set pieces which usually marked the climax of the RAF Pageants, held at Hendon aerodrome every summer from 1920 to 1937. So here goes! The themes chosen for these set-pieces tell us something about what ideas about airpower the RAF wished the public to absorb. Flight had good coverage of the pageants, and where possible I'll reference British Pathe newsreels. As there were so many I'll have to make this a series.

First, a bit of context. In 1910, Hendon (or London) aerodrome was established on the outskirts of London by Claude Grahame-White as a place where pioneer aviators could come to build, to train and to fly. But it was also the site of hugely popular aerial derbys and flying displays for the public, who came up from London in their many thousands to watch Grahame-White and others stunting over the airfield: the so-called 'Hendon Habit'. During the war, Hendon was requisitioned by the RFC for the purposes of training, test flying and occasional air defence. Grahame-White never got it back after the war, but he did manage to convince the government to allow it to be used once more for airminded propaganda: the Aerial Derby was re-established there in 1919.

The following year, the RAF itself got into the act by staging the first Hendon Pageant. This was held on Saturday, 3 July 1920. The crowd was estimated at about 40,000. While the programme was chock-full of aerobatics and mock combats, by comparison with later years the set-piece seems underdeveloped. In fact, it's hard to find one. The 'event of the day' is described as 'the strafing of Herr Von Rupert', an old kite balloon, by 'Flight-Lieut. Hazell, D.S.O., M.C., D.F.C. (34 Huns, 16 balloons)' flying a Sopwith Snipe. But this was followed by something which sounds more elaborate (photo at the top of the post):

A formation of five Bristol Fighters, flying in line, dived to about 300 ft. towards some "trenches," firing rounds from their machine guns at the same time. When over the trenches (about!) the Bristols "let go" their bombs -- which dropped so fast we could not see them fall -- and up went the trench and away flew the Bristols. It was a very impressive display.

But even this was followed by another display of aerial warfare:

By way of a finale, we were given a sort of aerial firework display; first of all a Handley Page [O/400?] discharged three artificial-cloud producing bombs, the resulting effects of which were really beautiful and convincing. Then some 1,300 small incendiary bombs were dropped from about 1,000 ft. These burst into bright white flames on striking the ground and remained burning for some time. They, also, were very convincing! Yes, these last few events made many think pretty hard on the matter of the next aerial war.

All of these were indeed spectacular, but they don't sound dramatic in the sense of telling a story. They aren't really what I'm talking about here.

The second RAF Pageant was held on Saturday, 2 July 1921. The crowd was more than twice the size of the first pageant. After the usual aerial action (including the downing of another observation balloon, henceforth manned by Major Sandbags), the finale was the destruction of the village of 'Scrappa Plain', built from scrap metal (photo above).

It was supposed that enemy headquarters, under Gen. Blitzenscooter, were quartered in this village -- we certainly observed quite a number of persons in grey-green uniforms foregathered round the Public Libeery [sic]. Several gaily dressed fräuleins were to be seen promenading about, whilst mechanics pottered about an Albatros biplane.

As the following British Pathe newsreel shows, Bristol Fighters appeared over the village. The soldiers leapt to their defences, the civilians 'took to flight', and General Blitzenscooter took off in his Albatros.

Soon the Bristol Fighters swooped down, firing bursts from their machine-guns, scattering the remainder of the occupants of the village, and as they passed over the village "released" their bombs [...] the Bristols made a second attack on the by then merrily burning village and pretty-well wiped it out. Seen from our point of vantage the whole effect was terribly realistic.

A Handley Page next flew over, dropping smoke bombs to screen a hypothetical infantry advance, and then, to close off the pageant, laid on a regular 'Brock's Benefit', i.e. an air-dropped fireworks display.

The next RAF Pageant, somewhat dampened by rain, was held on Saturday, 24 June 1922. The finale by now seems to be established as 'the event of the day', with corresponding effort made by the RAF to make it as memorable as popular. This time it was 'an Eastern drama, depicting the attack and destruction of a desert stronghold [...] intended to illustrate the work that was done by the R.A.F. in the East'.

The "plot" of the drama was quite thrilling, and was well carried out by the "actors". A machine (Bristol Fighter) returning from a reconnaissance, had to make a forced landing near the stronghold, which opened a fierce attack on the disabled machine. [...] Fortunately an armoured car section, returning from a raid, happened to be near at hand, and rushed up to the rescue, keeping off, with heavy machine-gun fire, numbers of gaily clothed Wottnotts, who had emerged from the stronghold.

A RAF bomber squadron then appeared on the scene. One machine lands by the stricken Brisfit bringing 'a spare air-speed indicator', and they are soon in the air again. (Photo above.)

In the meanwhile the bombing squadron attacked the stronghold, under heavy fire from an enemy anti-aircraft battery, mounted on motor lorries, situated some distance away. The bombs soon began to take effect, and after a few salves the stronghold was in flames, and the garrison was observed fleeing in all directions.

This was followed by the usual smokescreen-laying Handley Page.

Of course, the need for spectacle at least partly dictated the need to be destroying something, but what was chosen for destruction is surely significant. The 1920 and 1921 finales clearly look back to the late Great War (in the latter case a somewhat humorous attack on a village housing a German military HQ). In showing the destruction of a village of aggressive Wottnotts (yes, really) in the 1922 set piece, by contrast, was much more up to date: the RAF had earlier that very year assumed overall military control of the Iraq mandate, where it was attempting to use bombers and armoured cars to bring the area under air control. Hopefully it will be interesting to see how these finales evolved over the next decade and a half.

Update: I've added the advertising poster for the 1922 pageant ('Bombing a desert stronghold'); I found it at Onslow Posters.

This is the programme for an air display called 'London Defended' which was part of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (in Wembley Stadium, in fact, before it became Wembley Stadium). I must admit to having missed this one (and its predecessor in 1924), but it sounds like it was comparable to the longer-lived Hendon pageant. Here's the description from Wikipedia, which is based partly on the above programme (original research much?):

From May 9 to June 1, 1925 No. 32 Squadron RAF flew an air display six nights a week entitled "London Defended" Similar to the display they had done the previous year when the aircraft were painted black it consisted of a night time air display over the Wembley Exhibition flying RAF Sopwith Snipes which were painted red for the display and fitted with white lights on the wings tail and fueselage. The display involved firing blank ammunition into the stadium crowds and dropping pyrotechnics from the aeroplanes to simulate shrapnel from guns on the ground, Explosions on the ground also produced the effect of bombs being dropped into the stadium by the Aeroplanes. One of the Pilots in the display was Flying officer C. W. A. Scott who later became famous for breaking three England Australia solo flight records and winning the MacRobertson Air Race with co-pilot Tom Campbell Black in 1934.

Firing blanks into the crowds -- those were the days!

And the crowds apparently did appreciate the spectacle: the stadium was at capacity on more than one occasion. The Observer's special representative reported on -- gushed about, in fact -- the opening performance (10 May 1925, 13):

[...] "London Defended," which is to be acted from 8.15 to 10 p.m. every week-day evening till May 30, is whole-hearted a spectacle as could well be imagined. We have seen nothing like it before in the open air and on such a scale it could only shown in the open air. It has all the ingredients of exciting drama, with some stately pageantry -- as the musical ride of the Metropolitan Police -- super-added. Some few of its features were seen last year, notably the very lovely eddying and curvetting of aeroplanes studded from wing-tip to wing-tip with coloured lights, "shifted anew" with every move of the pilot. But the bulk of the drama is new and originally and unblushingly full of thrills.

London is attacked by hostile planes, incendiary bombs are dropped, and conveniently set fire to a tall building up which the fire escapes elongate themselves with breathless speed. Anti-aircraft guns punctuate with a glorious din the general cries and explosions, and the rattle of the fire-engines tearing around the track.

This was followed by a re-enactment of the Great Fire of London, whether to emphasise the danger of incendiaries or just to pile on more spectacle I'm not sure. (Though to read that 'The drama ends with the Phœnix-like appearance of Wren's St. Paul's in the place of the fire [...]' is actually a little chilling.) As there was also a mounted display by the Metropolitan Police, I suppose the 'London defended' theme can't be interpreted solely in military terms.

The Manchester Guardian's reporter also enjoyed the opening night's 'air raid spectacle' (11 May 1925, 9), though perhaps not as unrestrainedly as the Observer's had:

The vigour and vividness of the presentation of the spectacle of "London Defended," at the Stadium at night, well merited the applause of the great gathering in the auditorium.

All the thrills of a night air attack were accorded in one of the main spectacles. Warning of an invasion was sounded, and, as searchlights swept the sky, a squadron of aeroplanes, with fairy lights under their wings, soared overhead. Through the fire of anti-aircraft guns the raiders reached their objective, and a building at the west end of the Stadium was set alight by incendiary bombs, and a large tower at the east end also burst into flames. The conquest of the flames by the fire brigade, after a display of rescues by fire escapes, was an equally exciting spectacle.

The emphasis in both press accounts is very much on the entertainment, the spectacle of the show. But there must have been a propaganda element to it as well: employing a squadron in this way six nights out seven for the better part of a month would have been no small matter. And certainly that's what the Hendon pageant was about, impressing the public (and the politicians and the press) with the power and hence the value of the RAF. But the defensive focus at Wembley is interesting. At Hendon, the climactic setpieces (which I've long been meaning to write a post about...) were offensive in nature, showing British bombers blowing up a corner of some foreign field. Wembley, on the other hand, was about Britain being attacked and, apparently -- despite the squadron in question being equipped with fighters -- not being defended in the air, only from the ground. This is more reminiscent of the much more serious (but also well-publicised) annual air defence exercises held in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which the bomber usually got through. And the Home Office's Committee of Imperial Defence's ARP sub-committee first met in 1924, shortly before the first British Empire Exhibition, so I wonder if it's only a coincidence to see city bombing and civil defence put on such prominent display at this point in time. I'd be very interested to know what the official rationale for 'London Defended' was.

Image source: Wikipedia, though I originally noticed it on the background of the website for the upcoming Shock and Awe conference!

Last year Alun Salt pointed out to me a proposal for a collection of essays on the theme of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and history, and asked if I'd thought about sending in something on ideas about airpower and the dragon Smaug. I hadn't, but immediately saw what he was on about! I did a little research, wrote up the proposal below (with a couple of small differences), and sent it in. Of course, it was rejected (or not accepted, same thing).

'It is the aeroplane of war that is the real villain': Tolkien, the Third Age and the Air Age

Tolkien's legendarium is usually regarded as having been inspired by Northern European mythology, and indeed there can be no doubt that this is largely true. But scholars such as John Garth have recently begun examining the possible influence of the great events of the 20th century which Tolkien himself experienced, particularly the First World War. In this chapter I will develop this line of inquiry from a slightly different direction: from above. Tolkien and the aeroplane entered maturity almost at the same time, around 1910; by 1939 he was working on The Lord of the Rings and the aeroplane was now a terrible weapon of war. I will argue that Tolkien's major writings reflect the contemporary understandings of airpower as well as his own wartime experiences.

Tolkien himself experienced aerial warfare: at the Somme in 1916, at Hull in 1917. He appears to have written little about the subject in the years between, but no-one with the least intellectual curiosity could have failed to be aware of the tremendous amount of speculation about a potential aerial holocaust when the next war came. A wide range of British commentators from aviators to strategists to scientists to politicians agreed that in future warfare would be dominated by the bomber. Indeed, it was believed that at the outset of war enormous fleets of bombers would fly over London and obliterate it, causing tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths in only days or weeks. Such devastation would quickly eject Britain from the war, and so it was sometimes called 'the knock-out blow'. Fear of the knock-out blow spread from the early 1920s and was particularly intense in the 1930s, culminating during the 1938 Munich crisis.

There are several examples of 'air power' in Tolkien's major published works, of course exercised not by aeroplanes but by birds and beasts. The winged Nazgûl and the Great Eagles are most prominent among these: these perform air transport, reconnaissance, air superiority and close air support roles. There are also the crebain which spy on the Fellowship from the air. Such a wide variety of aerial functions makes sense for fantasy written in the early twentieth century, in the time of the first air wars, and indeed perhaps could not have been written any earlier.

It is true that there are clear antecedents for the most impressive aerial power envisaged by Tolkien. Smaug clearly owes much, especially its physical characteristics and abilities, to the unnamed dragon of Beowulf, a poem which Tolkien knew intimately. However, Smaug also rings true as an almost perfect evocation of the shadow of the bomber, which darkened Britain during the years in which The Hobbit was written and rewritten, from 1930 to 1937. Smaug's aerial threat to Lake-town parallelled the bomber's threat to civilisation, threats which ultimately had to be faced down even at terrible cost. Ultimately, I will show that Tolkien's fantasy world was in some respects a surprisingly subtle expression of the real world in which he lived.

The reason I say 'of course' it was rejected is that it's pretty clear that my proposal was a bit speculative, a bit thin -- that I didn't quite have the evidence I wanted. And the existence of Beowulf almost renders the whole idea pointless. But still, I do think there's a good circumstantial case to be made that Tolkien was influenced by contemporary ideas about airpower; good enough for a few blog posts anyway!

Image source: 'Death of Smaug' by J. R. R. Tolkien.

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

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


The artist is W. B. Robinson, but it was drawn from 'material supplied by Mr. Raymond Phillips'. In 1910 Phillips, a consulting engineer from Liverpool, gave a demonstration of a 20-foot version of his 'aerial torpedo' at the London Hippodrome. Here, according to a report in the New York Times, he impressed an audience which included Claude Grahame-White, who only weeks earlier had become famous for undertaking the world's first night flight. Here, too, the purpose of Phillips's airship drone was war:

"Now," said he [Phillips], "just imagine that row of seats is a row of houses, and that instead of a model, with paper toys in its hold, in its hold, I am controlling a full-sized airship carrying a cargo of dynamite bombs. Watch!"

He pressed another key. There was a faint click from the framework of the airship, and the bottom of the box that hung amidships fell like a trapdoor, releasing, not bombs, but a flight of paper birds, that fluttered gracefully down on the seats beneath. "There!" said the inventor, with a note of finality, and he turned away to answer a shower of questions.

Phillips claimed that 'for £300 I can make, equip, and dispatch to any distance three wirelessly controlled airships carrying huge quantities of explosives' -- and unlike a naval torpedo, his aerial torpedos were reusable, making them very cost effective.

"I offer my invention to the British Government, whose official representatives will inspect it in a day or two, because I want England to have command of the air just as she has command of the sea."

Although he gave further public demonstrations of his aerial torpedo in 1913 (and despite getting a free plug in the Illustrated News) the government seems to have declined to reward Phillips for his patriotism. This is reminiscent of Harry Grindell-Matthews' attempts a decade later to sell his death ray to the Air Ministry. In fact, even more so than death rays, pilotless or robot aircraft (though usually aeroplanes rather than airships!) represent a thread in the early discourse of flight which has barely been recognised by historians.

Want some examples? Okay, here are just a few of the ones I've found, all of them from before the first V-1 pilotless bombs fell on London. The year before Phillips appeared at the Hippodrome with his aerial torpedo, T. Donovan Bailey's short story 'When the sea failed her' had already depicted a long-range remote-controlled aeroplane destroying the cities of Europe and their inhabitants.

After the war, the aircraft designer Anthony Fokker revealed that

In 1916 the [German] Army authorities asked me if I could make a very cheap aeroplane with a very cheap engine, capable of flying about four hours, which could be steered through the air by wireless waves. They intended to load each one of these aeroplanes which a huge bomb and send them into the air under the control of one flying man, who would herd them through the sky by wireless like a flock of sheep. He would be able to steer them as he pleased, and send them down to earth in just exactly the spot he selected.

Just what spots would have been selected, Fokker didn't say. He claimed that he was about to start churning out these flying bombs when the Armistice was declared. And indeed, one of the conditions imposed on Germany under the Versailles treaty was a ban on the manufacture of 'air machines which can fly without a pilot'.

In 1930, the Labour MP J. M. Kenworthy (a former RN lieutenant-commander, and later Lord Strabolgi), wrote a book called New Wars: New Weapons. In it he claimed that:

Aeroplanes can now be flown without a pilot at all, directed by wireless -- taking off, cruising, manoeuvring in the air, returning and landing -- and all the time perfectly under control a hundred and more miles away from the station [...] Robot aeroplanes, controlled by wireless and each carrying half a ton of explosives, could be flown into the heart of London, there to deposit their high-explosive T.N.T., mustard gas or disease germs.

Later in the decade, this was portrayed in fictional form by Joseph O'Neill in Day of Wrath (1936). Here, London is annihilated by Germany using unmanned aircraft. 'Every single bomber a robot', says a British airman. 'They haven’t lost a man yet and won’t need to, as long as they’re only going for the fixed targets, towns, main roads, railways'.

Even a novelist so fundamentally uninterested in technological details as Rex Warner in The Aerodrome (1941) uses robotic aeroplanes. The protagonist Roy, who believes himself to be one of a new caste of superior men, a technological elite, is shocked when he discovers that his hero, the Air Vice-Marshal, is planning to replace all of his airmen with aircraft that don't need them. He is shown a display of formation aerobatic flying which is so daring and flawless that only machines and machines alone could carry it out.

And that right there was the reason for the dream of unmanned flight. Taking people out of the loop as far as possible promised to reduce error from human weakness, whether it be due to physical incapacity or moral capacity. Depending on your point of view, this could be a good thing or a bad thing; but in popular discourse it usually seems to have been thought of as the latter. Normal moral judgements are overturned in wartime, of course, but robots threatened to do away with them entirely, with no sense of pity, instincts for self-preservation, or even feelings of remorse. This is an idea which we are familiar with today (think The Terminator). But it's not a new one by any means. We have combat drones now; and we have histories of combat drones; and now here we have a prehistory of combat drones.

TRAVELLING OF THE FUTURE: THE BRITISH AERIAL TERMINUS OF THE WHITE MOON LINE -- The old order is passing. Already glimpses of the future of aerial transport, with all its mighty possibilities, are becoming visible. When the stricken nations return to a state of prosperity, great things are in store. As to what economic and commercial revolutions are latent in the development of flying, the most daring of us hesitates to speculate. The picture shows an aerial terminus of the White Moon Line, raised aloft over a seaport. This is no flat aerodrome, but a huge circular structure. Around its topmost circumference platforms swinging on a circular railed bed are carried by two rotating arms, on which the aero liners alight and from which they ascend. The arms are moved round as the wind changes, so that the aero liners descend and ascend facing it. These arms are inclined a little downwards to bring the liners more quickly to rest -- they alight up the slope -- and to assist them to gather speed more rapidly before the final breathless abandonment of the sloping platform and the upward rush into the heavens. On the left is seen a passenger lift with two cars which rise and sink continually, carrying passengers to and from the high embarking level. A mono-railway penetrates to the heart of the terminus; a footway runs between the tracks. An aero liner is seen just ascending, bound on some far journey; another is stationary, loading up. Inside the structure is a huge lift for lowering the aero liners for refitting and repair, and in its mysterious depths we can picture workshops lit by flickering arc lamps, where hundreds of mechanics work busily day and night... Perhaps some of the future aerial termini will be on the ground; but where a man can find no ground near the starting point, he will raise structures such as this. The sea-captains will look upwards at the air-captains, beholding the fulfilment of a great dream, dreamt by generations of wise men long passed away, who wondered because they knew that such great things would come to pass. From the original by Roderic Hill.

Source: Flight, 6 January 1921, 10-1.

According to Peter Bowler (following David Edgerton), 'the classic image of aviation promoted in the interwar years [in Britain] was that of the futuristic airliner, not the bomber'. I disagree; based on my own research, images like the above were markedly less common than more warlike ones. But this is admittedly just an impression, and could be due to a bias in my research methods. Whether civil aircraft or military ones dominated the projection of aviation is just the sort of question which could in principle be settled in a quantitative manner.