The title of this post could refer to my own state of mind as I reach a crossroads in this project. As I said in the previous post, it's time to dig deeper into the 1918 Australian mystery aeroplane scare, to look beneath the surface. What was really going on? Why did people see mystery aeroplanes at this time and att this place? I have several lines of inquiry which should lead to an answer (if not the answer). One is the comparative and transnational perspective; another leads through airmindedness and the early understanding of and responses to flight. I'll address these in later posts. But the key perspective I need to try to recreate is the fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding the mystery aeroplanes, of which they were (I argue) both a symptom and a cause. Which is the real reason for my choice of title. Really.

Again, there are a number of threads to follow. One is my starting point in all this: the role of the press. As I have already shown, the scare shows up in press accounts only for about four or five weeks after mid-March 1918, even though the number of sightings peaked after then. The terminus date for the press seems to be around 23 April. Up until then there is a steady stream of stories; afterwards I know of nothing until 4 June, when the Melbourne Age reported that about nine or ten people, including a returned soldier, watched an aeroplane fly over Charlton; the story was reprinted the following day in the Ballarat Courier (adding that 'The returned man had considerable experience with aircraft'); and after that there's nothing at all.

One possibility is that the newspapers lost interest in mystery aeroplanes, whether because they stopped believing them or just thought they were no longer newsworthy. Indeed, on 25 April the Adelaide Register declared that it had taken a patriotic stand against publishing 'scare war news'. But that doesn't appear to be the case generally. NAA MP1049/1, 1918/066, the Royal Australian Navy's file on mystery aeroplane sightings, includes at least twenty-nine distinct references to newspapers in a variety of forms, either press clippings or direct or indirect interactions. Four of these date to before 1918 (or at least are indeterminate in date) or relate to New Zealand. Of the balance, twelve are from on or before 23 April 1918, the date after which mystery aeroplane articles stopped appeared, and (logically enough) thirteen appeared afterwards. That suggests that the press were in fact still paying attention to the scare.

A more likely explanation is censorship. Of the twelve references on or before 23 April, ten are to actually published articles, one the WA censor passing on information from the Bunbury Herald's editor about a Zeppelin seen at Fremantle, and one was a notification from the censor that news of a mystery aeroplane sighting at Ballarat West had been suppressed. That is the earliest date for a censored report that I've found, and it's right on the watershed date of 23 April. The thirteen references after that date include only one published article (the Age one noted above), two notifications from the censor of suppressed articles, eight of articles submitted to the censor, and two of direct communications from newspapers to defence authorities regarding mystery aeroplane reports received (including one from the Register, despite its proclaimed scepticism). It's unclear whether the articles submitted to the censors were published or not (at least two were not; the others I'll have to check on microfilm) but even so it's evident that there's a very different censorship regime in this period than there was before 23 April. A check of NAA files relating to censorship should confirm this.

Whether there was formal censorship or not, the lack of stories about mystery aeroplanes means that the press was not the primary vector of mystery aeroplane stories after 23 April. I've suggested that it instead helped fuel it in other ways, by creating alarm about possible defeat in Europe and raids on Australia. But I'll still need to try to explain why the scare then continued; or, put differently, how did people 'know' that mysterious aeroplanes were around? I'll tackle that question in a following post.

View Mystery aircraft, Australia, 1918 in a larger map

My next step in characterising the 1918 Australian mystery aircraft scare was to plot all the sightings Google Maps, which you can see above. I've used differently-coloured icons for different time periods to give an idea of the progression over the course of 1918: blue is January and February; red, March; green, April; cyan, May; yellow, June; purple, July; magenta, August through November. There are too many for Google Maps to show at once in an embedded map (without me learning JavaScript) but the rest can be seen here. Each icon is named for the location and has an attached date, but no other information. I dithered over which map mode to use but in the end settled on good old satellite mode, as it gives an idea of the terrain but also has good social data such as roads and towns (even if these are from 2012, not 1918). Of course you can switch between them yourself.


View Mystery aircraft, Australia, 1914 in a larger map

I've made similar maps for the other war years, without colour-coding by month as there were too few sightings to warrant it. The maps for 1915 and 1916 are for the same reason very uninteresting, so I won't embed them here. The 1914 map is above; the 1917 one below.

View Mystery aircraft, Australia, 1917 in a larger map

As I've discussed, the date is often vague and at this level that applies to the location too. The information provided in the intelligence files is usually reasonably specific as to the town or locality; in only one case was I unable to find, even roughly, the place where a mystery aircraft was said to be seen ('Reef Creek, South East district, SA'; it's not in the national gazetteer or the state one). But below that level it's more variable. Sometimes there were sightings outside towns, on roads or railways or from remote properties. Again I've not been very fussy about this and have generally gone with however the sighting was classed at the time. For example, an aeroplane was reported to have chased a train early one morning from Kaniva to Dimboola. Where do I place the marker: Kaniva, Dimboola, or somewhere in between? I put it on Dimboola because that's where the Navy's index lists it, probably because that's where the police report came from. Also, sometimes the information I have only states where the aircraft was thought to be, not where it was seen from, and that is an estimation fraught with observer bias. So what I'm saying is don't place too much faith in my icon placement. It's another one of those things I don't care about too much -- it's not terribly important to me to be able to distinguish between a sighting in Hope Street or one in Smith Avenue, at this point what I'm trying to see are any large-scale patterns.

And for that it has been useful. It was already clear that Victoria was far and away where most of the mystery aircraft were seen in 1918, with NSW second (Terrigal/Terrigal Haven alone had eleven reports, though only three involved people other than the Moir family or Gunner Naughton) and the other states a long way behind. The map reinforces that impression; but it does more, because it shows that within Victoria some areas were favoured much more than others. Zooming in helps here:

View Mystery aircraft, Australia, 1918 in a larger map

There were no mystery aircraft reported from the Riverina region in the north, nor from the central area around Bendigo or the Alps (of course, there weren't many people living there either). The northeast had only a handful. By contrast, the Mallee and the Wimmera in the west of the state had a significant number of sightings. The red icons in the northeast mostly mark sightings which fell on the same day early in the scare, 21 March, including one by a policeman: it was taken very seriously and a pair of investigators came up from Melbourne travelling through the Mallee seeking out witnesses. There was another burst around Ouyen a month later. The activity in Wimmera included hotspots at Casterton (three sightings) and Hamilton (four), and the only occasion when an aeroplane was seen to land (according to the press, anyway; the eyewitnesses, a drover and a boy, said no such thing when they were eventually interviewed by police and military intelligence).

But the real heartland was the arc from the Kinglake ranges north of Melbourne, through Melbourne itself and right around the southeast coast to Orbost in Gippsland, also taking in the Latrobe Valley inland. Again there are many hotspots within this area: Bairnsdale with at least five sightings was the most visited by mystery aircraft in the whole state, though the first was not until May, quite late in the scare. Inverloch had four, Sale, Orbost and Yarram three. While Melbourne is massively underrepresented, given that in 1918 it had 51% of the state's population, given the difficulty of seeing anything at all in an urban night sky I think it had a reasonable amount, including one from West Footscray where I lived as a child; 'Anxious' of Brighton wrote in to the Herald (which passed the letter on to the censor) to ask whether the 'mysterious aeroplane' they had seen early on 7 May 'might be the German one that is about'. What was going on in these places? Why were they so prone to mystery aeroplane sightings? I don't have an answer, and I may not ever have a convincing one, but it's time to start digging deeper.

In my previous post, I threatened more statistics about Australian mystery aircraft scares of the First World War, and here they are. What I've been doing is collating all the sightings recorded in two NAA files, MP1049/1, 1918/066 and MP367/1, 512/3/1319. The former is the Navy Office's file pertaining to 'Reports of suspicious aeroplanes, lights etc', more than a thousand pages in all, though the majority of it is composed of reports obtained by military intelligence and local police. The Navy was presumably interested because, assuming the reports were genuine, the most likely explanation was that the aircraft were flying from a German raider operating in Australian waters. The file also contains some operational orders and reports relating to the search for the presumed raider, regular reports and analyses of the sightings to date, and related correspondence. The other file contains 'Reports from 2nd M D during War Period on lights, aeroplanes, signals etc.' 2nd Military District covered NSW; presumably there were similar files from the other districts but if so I haven't found them yet (3rd MD would be the one to get, as that was Victoria where the majority of sightings took place). Some of the material in it is duplicated in the Navy's file, but there's much which isn't, including a number of pre-1918 reports.

After going through these two files, I now have a master catalogue of 256 distinct sightings, which is nearly a hundred more than are listed in the Navy's own master index. But the data is quite dirty, I've tried to cull duplicate reports, but there are probably still a few in there. The dates are sometimes vague, sometimes only at the 'about six weeks ago' level of accuracy. Sometimes a sighting is recorded only in the index (with a very brief description) and can't be found anywhere else in the file. What constitutes a 'sighting' also varies. Sometimes a number of sightings are counted as one, sometimes not: multiple reports from one location usually are, but one at the same time from an adjacent town generally are not; reports over a few days are often considered to be single sightings, but not always. I've generally tried to follow the treatment at the time, especially in the indexes and summary reports. But not all cases are listed in those, so I've had to use my own judgement. And sometimes, to be honest, I found some handwritten reports almost impossible to decipher and haven't tried to extract every last sighting from them, just the main details. For the moment that doesn't matter, I just need to be able to characterise the mystery aeroplane scare in overall terms. A few missing sightings or wrong dates here or there won't make much difference.

And it's already proven very educational. I've plotted the sightings by month above. It's clear that, apart from the main scare in 1918 (212 sightings in total -- again, don't take the numbers too literally), there were two or three much smaller outbreaks: one in October 1914 (perhaps corresponding to the departure of the first AIF troopships), one in April-May 1917, and maybe another in October 1917. But it also shows that my earlier understanding of the course of the 1918 scare itself was wrong. Based on reports published in newspapers, I thought it started in March and ended in mid-April. In fact, it was only getting started: the majority of sightings took place after the press stopped reporting the scare. The peak month was April, with 76 sightings; in May this dropped to 48, and in June and July returned to the same level as March, the first month of the scare, at about 20 sightings. The number of reports fell to below 10 for each of the remaining full months of the war, but this was still equal to or higher than any previous month before March 1918 bar October 1914. This means that my suggestion that 'press reports of mystery aeroplanes themselves helped to propagate the wave of sightings' will need to be modified: at most they can only have helped kick off the scare. Why did the press not report any sightings after mid-April? Censorship may be part of the answer; I've found one case from July where the Sydney censor's office notified the Navy Office that it had 'permanently held' one mystery aeroplane report submitted by the local stringer at Gilgandra to two Sydney dailies. There are other notices from censors but I'll have to check to see if the reports they passed on made it into the papers or not.

This plot is the same as above, except that the sightings are also plotted by whether they were interpreted as aircraft or signals (e.g. mysterious lights flashing in the hills, or from a ship out to sea, presumably to or from German spies or vessels; sometimes they were supposed to be electrical flashes from wireless stations). It shows that I'm cheating a bit: some of what I'm calling mystery aircraft were not thought of as aircraft at all, or even as airborne in any way. But only a bit: the mystery aeroplanes almost always outnumbered the mystery signals, usually very greatly when there was a scare on (with the exception of the October 1917 scare, which is revealed to be all signals, no aircraft); and when there was a mystery aeroplane scare on there was a rise in mystery signal reports too. So this suggests they are related phenomena, which makes sense -- an odd light which is on the ground or on the sea is obviously more likely to be interpreted as something which isn't an aeroplane. The clincher is the fact that the military and naval authorities at the time put them together under the one heading: they were part and parcel of the same (potential) German threat. This perhaps complicates the role of airmindedness in the scare; but on the other hand it makes it easier to relate mystery aircraft scares to other types of scares, such as the Edwardian spy mania in Britain.

Here's an initial answer to the question 'where?' I've broken down the sightings by state (and so excluded two sightings in the Navy's files not from Australia: one in New Zealand and one in Papua, effectively an Australian colony). Victoria was clearly mystery aeroplane central in 1918, with 133 sights out of the 212 recorded that year. It was probably the primary source of sightings in 1917 too, but only as a first among equals. NSW was the only other state to even come close, and even then it had less than half the number of mystery aeroplane reports that Victoria had in April 1918. South Australia and Tasmania had significant numbers of mystery aircraft reports across the war; Western Australia and Queensland very little.

Victoria's dominance is a fact which requires some explanation, and I don't know that I've got a convincing one yet. It's not simply due to population. NSW had the greatest population of any state in 1918, 1.9 million; Victoria was second with 1.4 million -- and third was Queensland with 700,000, and it had only two mystery aeroplane sightings for the whole war. Perhaps it had something to do with population density, which was about 2.5 times higher in Victoria than NSW. That is, maybe something odd in the sky had more chance of being seen over Victoria than it did over NSW. But that only works if there were multiple sightings at the same time, which was not the norm (though a couple of the hotspots where that did happen, Ouyen and Gippsland, are in Victoria). Or perhaps rumours spread more easily in more densely-populated Victoria, especially after newspapers stopped printing news of mystery aeroplanes. (Most sightings were from rural districts, but I think this was even more true of Victoria than NSW.) Perhaps Victorians felt more under threat? The temporary capital of Australia, with Parliament and the Department of Defence, was Melbourne, so it could be seen as more likely to be attacked. But that doesn't explain sightings in far-flung corners of the state and I don't think people really think like that anyway (the place where you live is obviously the centre of the universe). It's true that the German raider Wolf had mostly preyed in the seas south of Australia, so maybe the next one would too; but the next one could strike anywhere, and besides, the Wolf's seaplane had (supposedly) flown over Sydney, not Melbourne. I'm not convinced, anyway. Perhaps looking at the data more closely will throw something up. Maybe it was the weather.

Finally, this is a plot of just the sightings from March 1918 onwards, i.e. just the 1918 scare itself, but here the number of reports are daily instead of monthly. This makes it clear that the peak period of the scare was the month from mid-April to mid-May. More precisely, the scare started around 17 March, kicked into higher gear around 18 April, peaked on 29 April, and halted around 13 May (with a couple of resurgences from 31 May and 2 July lasting a week or two). What else was going on around then? I've already suggested that two press stories helped start the scare: the claim that the Wolf's seaplane had flown over Sydney the previous year (published 16 March), and news of the successful start of the German spring offensive (published 25 March, though press reports were anticipating it before then). But if my argument that the mystery aircraft sightings were caused, at least in a general way, by anxiety about the war being lost and/or Australia itself being directly threatened, then the big jump from 18 April suggests that there had been further bad news around that time.

And there was: reports of Haig's famous 'backs to the wall' order of the day were first published in the Australian press on 13 April. It's tempting to follow that logic and try to assign the peaks and troughs in the scare with the fortunes of the German offensive, but it doesn't quite work. The scare did peter out when the offensive did, by the end of July, and maybe the falling away after the end of April was because the Germans had stopped attacking for the moment. But then why did mystery aeroplanes reappear in the first week of July? That was a lull on the Western Front. There might have been some other reason for anxiety that week; I haven't looked yet. But the problem with this -- and it's a more general problem with relating specific incidents like mystery aeroplane sightings with broader trends like the course of the war -- is that I'm really just guessing here. What evidence do I have that people who saw mystery aeroplanes were particularly worried about the way the war was going? There's some evidence, but it's scanty; it's not something that police constables tended to jot down. This is one reason why I'm attempting, in a small way, a comparative study similar scares in other places and other times: the fear of war, of attack, of spying is common to many of them, and teasing out the similarities as well as the differences between these defence scares will, I hope, strengthen my argument. Or I could just end up arguing in circles.

Like Gaul and probably some other things, my mystery aeroplanes paper will be divided into three parts:

1. An overview of the 1918 Australian mystery aeroplane scare itself.
2. The immediate historical context which helps explain the scare, namely the threats from German raiders and of Allied defeat.
3. The bigger picture into which the scare fits, namely other mystery aircraft waves before and since, in Australia and elsewhere.

That's a fair bit to do in limited space (the paper is 20 minutes long with 10 minutes for questions; the formal version no more than 8000 words including references) so I need to have a thorough understanding of my material: what is essential and needs to be included and what is not-essential and should be left out.

So what material do I have? There are next to no secondary sources on the scare that I'm aware of, apart from passing references; conversely, the great majority of my primary sources relate to it. I first came across the scare in Australian and New Zealand newspapers from March-April 1918, and that is certainly a key aspect as I'll be arguing that press reports of mystery aeroplanes themselves helped to propagate the wave of sightings. I'll probably have another look through Trove to see if there's anything I've missed or has been digitised since I last looked. Really, though, I've already got enough here to work with.

But the press reports are only the tip of the iceberg. I've looked through domestic military intelligence files on 'Reports of suspicious aeroplanes, lights etc' held by the National Archives of Australia and these include very many more mystery aeroplane reports than were ever reported in the press. (Including Smithy's sighting.) A hand-written index, which looks like it was compiled by 3rd Military District (i.e. Victoria) late in the scare, in NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/66 lists 152 nationwide for the whole war. Of these, 135 took place in 1918 (the majority in March and April but with a substantial number in May and June and only gradually tailing off towards the Armistice) and of these, 91 were from Victoria. (Expect more statistics in future posts.) The files themselves consist of letters from concerned citizens reporting their sightings, reports on local police investigations of sightings and suspects, press clippings (usually passed on from the censor), naval and military intelligence analyses, and copies of official correspondence regarding air-sea searches for raiders. There's also a separate file, NAA: MP367/1, 512/3/1319, which has reports just from 2nd Military District (i.e. NSW). I haven't compared this with NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/66 yet but it looks like it has some sightings which didn't make it to the master file. Not that it's necessary to get every last detail down, of course. The big picture is more important.

That brings me to the contextual section of the talk/paper. In terms of primary sources, the newspapers and military intelligence files give excellent clues as to how the mystery aeroplanes were interpreted (i.e. as German aircraft operating from raiders off the coast or from inland locations). I would also like to have a look at any NAA files from the Council of Defence (roughly the equivalent of the Committee of Imperial Defence in Britain) to see if it discussed the mystery aircraft and raider threat. But at this point I need to also need to dig into the secondary literature, so I can understand the Australian political and social context. Especially since Australian history is not my thing! So for example I'm currently reading John McQuilton's Rural Australia and the Great War: From Tarrawingee to Tangambalanga (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2011), which I'm finding very useful (though unfortunately the region of Victoria it focuses on seems to have missed out on mystery aeroplanes!) Of course, there is plenty of work I can tap into on the military and naval situation, so that's fine.

The third part is in some ways the trickiest. I want to tie this scare into mystery aircraft scares in other countries (as well as invasion and spy scares). But if I'm not expert in Australian history, still less am I expert in American, New Zealand, Canadian, South African, Russian, Romanian, Norwegian, Swedish... There is some excellent work on national airmindedness to draw upon, that's no problem; but unfortunately good, academic secondary sources on the scares themselves are scarce (I hope this is just my ignorance speaking but I fear not). There are some for the 1909 and 1913 British phantom airship waves; a couple of articles on the 1897 mystery airship wave in America. The other scares I know of don't rate even that much, apart from discussions in ufological and sceptical literature. I could cite some primary sources, particularly where English is the relevant language; but for this type of comparative work (and given the word limit) having access to reliable surveys would be much better. I'll seek out secondary literature but fear I will have to resort to some primary sources here, at least to show that these scares happened. I may well end up focusing on the British parallels, as it's what I know best and seems to be the best documented, and just gesture towards the other scares. I can't do everything in this paper, after all!

My abstract for the Australian Historical Association's 31st Annual Conference, to be held in Adelaide this July, has been accepted. The title and abstract are as follows:

Dreaming war: airmindedness and the Australian defence panic of 1918

Between March and June 1918, Australian newspapers, police forces and military intelligence units were deluged with hundreds of reports of mysterious aeroplanes. They were seen in every state, mostly at night, by men and women, young and old, civilians and soldiers. As there were only a tiny number of aircraft operating in Australia, the sightings were presumed to be German aircraft, perhaps flown from unknown merchant raiders operating in Australian waters or by foreign spies working against Australia. The reports were taken seriously, but investigations by the authorities eventually found nothing to substantiate them. The mystery aeroplanes were phantoms.

Australia had been at war for more than three years. But it was a nation both divided and defenceless. It had gone through two bitterly-fought conscription referenda, and appeared to be threatened from within by immigrants, the Irish and the Wobblies. The vast majority of its military forces were deployed overseas, with little more than poorly-equipped training cadres remaining at home. In March 1918, newspapers carried reports that the German merchant cruiser Wolf, which had been raiding Australian waters the previous year, had flown its seaplane over Sydney unopposed and undetected. A few days later, Germany's Spring Offensive opened, nearly breaking the Allied lines for the first time since 1914. The mystery aeroplanes resulted from a new perception that Australia was directly threatened and that the war could be lost.

In this paper I will discuss what this previously obscure episode reveals about the state of mind of the Australian people after nearly four years of total war. I will compare it with other mystery aircraft panics which preceded and followed it, both in Australia and elsewhere. Finally, I will explore what these transnational phenomena tell us about early airmindedness, or the cultural responses to the coming of flight.

Much more briefly, I'll be looking at the 1918 Australian mystery aircraft scare and trying to place it into the context of what was happening at the time, both domestically and overseas, and using it as a case study to probe mystery aircraft panics more generally and what they say about airmindedness. This is the next phase of my grand plan, i.e. blog -> talk -> publish. I've already blogged about this topic a number of times; expect to see a good deal more about it over the next couple of months.

This is good/exciting and bad/scary for a number of reasons. It's good/exciting because it's the first time I'll be talking (and hopefully publishing) about mystery aircraft, despite it being a major research obsession of mine for more than a decade now. Ditto for airmindedness, despite the name of this blog. It's also good/exciting because I've been awarded an AHA/CAL Travel and Writing Bursary, which includes entry into a workshop and mentoring programme. Which is also bad/scary: that means that instead of writing my paper the night before, as is the time-honoured tradition, I have to have written a formal version two weeks beforehand. So I'm going to be busy. And the other bad/scary thing is: I'm doing Australian history! I must be crazy.

Some good news from Burma, or at least less bad than usual. The Yorkshire Post reports that, although still retreating, Allied forces 'have successfully evaded the enemy attempt to cut them off in the Mandalay area' (1). The British have been divided from the Chinese, however, with the former retreating up the Chindwin and the latter up the Irrawaddy. The paper's military correspondent gives credit to General Alexander's 'skilful manœuvring' in avoiding encirclement, but also praises the 'valour' of Chinese soldiers after the fall of Lashio, who 'got across the path of the [Japanese] armoured brigade and even drove its tanks back with losses' and thereby gave the British time to make good their retreat. But the task is before Alexander now, 'one of the hardest ever set before a commander', to retire northwest without being engaged by the Japanese, to link up again with Chinese forces in the north, and 'to avoid being driven on India'. The Manchester Guardian's first leading article today admits that 'Japan's campaign in Burma is now almost won', at least 'the fine delaying actions fought by our troops have given India a previous four months for making ready' (4).

Moving in the same direction as Alexander's army are Indian refugees. Between 250,000 and 300,000 people, about a quarter of the prewar population of Indian immigrants, have now arrived in India, and are still arriving at the rate of 2000 a day. According to the Guardian (6),

The whole organisation for the reception and dispersal of evacuees is non-racial in character. On the Indian side of the land border the elaborate arrangements made in organising food, water, and shelter along a difficult road were completed in a remarkably short time. Under the present arrangements no refugee need pay for anything from the moment he reaches Tamu, on the border, until he reaches the railhead in India.

In fact the Indian government has suffered accusations of 'racial discrimination and general inefficiency' in its handling of the refugee problem, from among others the Congress party. In its defence, the Overseas Department pointed out the huge scale of the problem and explained how cholera had threatened the evacuation route, and only 'drastic medical measures brought it under control'. But Congress itself is not immune to criticism. One of its key figures, Rajagopalachari, has resigned from the Congress Working Committee because it rejected his proposal that Congress 'acknowledge the claim of the Moslem League to separation'; in the words of The Times 'the most serious breach that has been made in the solidarity of Congress in recent years' (4). The same committee's support of 'non-violent con-cooperation' has led to concerns in the United States about 'the advantage [...] it may give to Japanese propaganda, not only in India but elsewhere in the Orient'. One suggestion is that 'a Pacific Charter' be drawn up (not withstanding the fact that India is nowhere near the Pacific!), apparently some sort of commitment to greater independence after the war since the reference follows a comment that 'the actions of the Japanese are in themselves a denial of the pretence of a war of "Asiatic liberation"'.

Where Japan will attack next is the question. The Yorkshire Post's New Delhi correspondent suggests it is unlikely that it will continue pressing overland in Burma, since 'the Japanese have rarely shown themselves in favour of long-strung-out land battles' (1). More likely it will turn to the sea. (Early this morning 'a combined British naval and military force' arrived off Madagascar 'to forestall a Japanese move', so it probably won't be there.) It could try 'to bypass India and to head for the Persian Gulf'; perhaps via Ceylon, which is 'determined to become another Malta'. But Australians in India all seem to agree that Japan will 'concentrate all available forces [...] for a full-scale attack upon Australia':

The attack upon Townsville [sic] is read as an augury of this. It is thought to indicate a projected land invasion.

That opinion is shared in Australia itself, according to the paper's 'Special Correspondent with General MacArthur' (3). In the six months since Pearl Harbor 'she has achieved miracles', not only in raising armies but in making 'changes in the social and economic order in the cause of total war which anyone who knew this tough and politically minded people before the war would find almost incredible'. For example, Australia has 'Ruthlessly streamlined her economic system, thus following Britain's example' in finding labour for factory work; 'Reduced her seven State Governments factually, if not theoretically, to one'; laid the foundations for a postwar economy 'comparable to that of Britain and America, despite her infinitely smaller population'; and

Finally, and this is an historic move, she has turned her thoughts and plans from the coasts which are highly vulnerable to enemy air and sea attack, and begun taming the interior. Much of this country can only be compared which such areas as the Sahara and Gobi Deserts. She has also found quite unexpected riches in her deserts.

While 'Australia is making the same mistakes as Britain', with 'the same wrangling among the Government departments, and the same threat of black markets',

if this country survives something new is coming out of all this. It will be similar perhaps to Britain's social revolution, yet in many ways it will be characteristically Australian. Rightly or wrongly, Australians believe that they will either go under or become a real nation, and they do not mean to go under.

I wonder how that's going to turn out...

After a lull of a few days, the bomber war has started up again, with a German raid on Exeter and a British raid on Hamburg. Exeter was the first city to be attacked in the Baedeker raids, though little about it reached the press at the time. There's no denying it this time: as the Daily Mirror has it (5),

7 HUNS DOWN IN 3RD TERROR RAID ON EXETER

That's an impressive result for the defenders, since there were only about thirty attacking aircraft. (Two were accounted for over France by Squadron Leader J. A. F. MacLachlan, DFC, who lost his arm flying in defence of Malta and now uses an 'attachment' to help fly his fighter: 'Flying with this new gadget is a piece of cake', 2.) The losses appear to have forced new tactics upon the Luftwaffe, as 'FOR the first time, fighters escorted night bombers', in 'short and fairly intense' raids on two (unidentified) south coast towns last night (Daily Express, 1). But regardless, 'The loss of life is likely to be heavier than in the earlier attacks' (Mirror, 5).

Waves of raiders swept low over the city machine-gunning streets. A number of people were killed. 'Military objectives' included a hospital and almshouses. At least five churches were destroyed, as well as a girls' school and a college. The shopping centre suffered severe damage.

Exeter took it: 'eye-witnesses said that they had never seen people people stand up to a blitz more splendidly', and firefighters and ARP workers all did their part. But the Daily Express's reporter in Exeter has written a blistering attack on the 'muddle' exhibited by the city's post-raid welfare services (4):

NO BUSES FOR EXETER VICTIMS
100 homeless 'forgotten' in rest centre

As of last night, 'NUMBERS of homeless in Exeter, including aged invalids and babies' were still waiting for the promised buses to take them to reception areas out of the city. 'Many had been waiting since dawn', and had arrived in their nightclothes and barefoot. The WVS and NFS had fed and clothed them, 'But at the central relief office I found they knew nothing about this rest centre, and did not know anyone was there'.

At another rest centre people were fed and told to go to the central office a mile and a half away if they wanted to be evacuated.

Some were so old and tired that they sat and slept on benches. Some women cried from exhaustion, but most of the people, even the children, endured muddle and delay stoically.

For its part, on Sunday night Bomber Command attacked the docks and shipyards of Hamburg, though reports in the press are strangely subdued, giving little more than a description of the value of the targets, an account of the flak and fighter defences, and the assertion that the RAF 'left great fires glowing through the cloud' (The Times, 4). For once, much more prominence is given to Coastal Command, which 'had a successful night' over Norway. For example,

An Australian squadron flying Hampdens attacked the aerodrome, troop barracks, and a strongpoint near Kristiansand, on the southern tip of Norway, with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. A few moments after bombs had been dropped in some woods near the barracks pilots saw a succession of green, blue and white flashes, suggesting that an ammunition dump had been hit, and big fires broke out. The next aircraft dropped a stick of bombs right across the barrack block.

Other targets bombed include another aerodrome, another strongpoint, and two 'medium-sized enemy merchant ships lying side by side in a narrow fjord, apparently refuelling'. Coastal Command suffered no losses; Bomber Command lost five aircraft.

The air correspondent for the Yorkshire Post writes that 'there is this contest in bombing' between Britain and Germany, which 'bears some resemblance to that of 1940 with the roles reversed':

At that time the R.A.F. would probably have preferred to make few or no bombing replies to the heavy and sustained German raiding. There was no illusion in the Service, which knew it was yet ready to strike hard at Germany with the bomb.

But the scale of the German raids was such that it demanded some reply by the R.A.F. The consequence was that, with the relatively small forces then available, counter-attacks were made. They were on a comparatively small scale, but they served to show that we were not entirely incapable of hitting back.

Now it is Germany which is being bombed heavily, and which needs to show it is striking back. In fact, this contest will probably escalate:

we must not suppose that we are to-day engaged in air warfare on the largest possible scale. It will certainly increase in intensity and probably soon. The Germans will certainly contrive to throw more bombers into their attacks on this country. The R.A.F. will soon be reinforced -- in accordance with the undertaking of General Marshall -- by units of the United States Army Air Forces working from bases in Britain.

Even if Germany were to redeploy bombers from Russia and Italy 'in order to strike at hated Britain', they are reaching 'the limit of their air power, whereas the United Nations are now coming to the point of greatest augmentation'.

Unless all calculations are proved false; unless every level of computation of productive power and productive resources is wrong, the United Nations should be able to bomb Germany before this autumn is out on a scale never before contemplated; on a scale which will make the German attacks on this country in 1940 and 1941 look comparatively small.

Finally, the Express has an update on the fortunes of 'Storm Troopers Over Perivale', the 'H.G.s invasion play'. The playwright and producer, P. B. Baker, says it has played to 'packed houses' in Basingstoke since the Express reviewed it, and has made more than £100, which isn't bad on a £20 investment. And the future looks bright. The play will have two performances at the Aldershot Theatre Royal next month, and may be staged by 'Army units in Blackpool'. More than that, London beckons: 'Mr. Clifford Hamilton, manager of the original "Journey's End" company [...] was impressed with its qualities and hopes it will be possible to stage the play commercially'.

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

]]> http://airminded.org/2012/05/05/tuesday-5-may-1942/feed/ 2 http://airminded.org/2012/05/02/saturday-2-may-1942/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saturday-2-may-1942 http://airminded.org/2012/05/02/saturday-2-may-1942/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 13:53:46 +0000 Brett Holman http://airminded.org/?p=9461

All the newspapers today carry news of the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini in Salzburg; only the Daily Express leads with it. Its angle is that there is 'STRONG evidence' that the two dictators agreed that Italy would sent 'a large part' of its army to Russia, while Germany would send 'thousands' of its soldiers to Italy (1). Two possible explanations are given for this apparently contrary strategy: 'A coming extension of the Mediterranean Front', or 'to prevent any chance of armed insurrection by the Italian Army'. The Italian people are said to be 'thoroughly discontented with their acutely depressed conditions' and so Mussolini has given his prefects 'supreme powers to deal with "possible future difficulties of an urgent nature"' (his own words), and the Gestapo is now in control of the Italian police. Where Morley Richards, the author of this piece, gets his information from is not clear; none of the other papers make the same claims. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the meeting are rather 'mysterious'; the Yorkshire Press asks why Japan apparently was not represented and was not mentioned in the final communique -- even though the only public reference to the meeting beforehand was a garbled one in a Tokyo newspaper (1).

Most of the other newspapers choose to lead with the fighting retreat of the Chinese north of Lashio. Japanese forces are now 'within 20 miles of Mandalay, wartime capital of Burma'; there is a 'fierce battle raging on the Irrawaddy front South-West of Mandalay as British troops withdraw to the North bank of the river' (Yorkshire Post, 1). Elsewhere in the war against Japan, there was what is officially described (by MacArthur's headquarters) as a 'brilliant' attack on the Japanese airfield at Lae, 'scoring many direct hits on a line of 30 'planes' (Manchester Guardian, 7). The besieged fortress island of Corregidor suffered 12 Japanese air raids on Thursday as well as shelling from artillery; return fire hit 'enemy batteries, truck columns, and supply dumps'. There is apparently still resistance elsewhere in Luzon, since a radio broadcast from Tokyo says a 'smashing Japanese attack' on Mount Pinatubo 'compelled the enemy to flee in wild disorder' (The Times, 4). Allied political and military leaders have been talking up the Japanese threat. Prime Minister Smuts, said in Pretoria yesterday that 'we must prepare for the menace from Japan' (3). 'If that danger materializes and approaches our shores',

I hope that all sections will be united in facing that danger -- whatever colour of their skin -- rather than go under [...] I want the people of South Africa to go all out. I want to increase our defence forces on a basis that will make South Africa secure against any such menace.

Meanwhile General Blamey, in his first meeting with journalists since becoming commander of 'all land forces in the South-West Pacific area', claimed that 'the Japanese threat to Australia, far from diminishing, had actually increased', despite the buildup of Allied forces in Australia (Guardian, 6). He said that Japan has reinforced its forces to the north-east of Australia, and might attempt to take Darwin or Port Moresby, 'strategically important to either side [...] as jumping-off points'.

Whatever the Japanese plan affecting the Australian area may be, it would involve inevitably stretching and straining his communications. Our most important points are at least 1,000 miles from the enemy's. If a fight comes we will give a good account of ourselves.

The full moon helped RAF night fighters shoot down eleven German raiders on Thursday night, out of less than fifty total. Four of these 'fell to a Beaufighter squadron led by Wing Commander Max Aitken, D.F.C., Lord Beaverbrook's son', who himself got one of them (The Times, 4). Others were brought down by anti-aircraft guns, including two by a battery in the northeast. The battery itself was hit by bombs, and a number of papers today carry articles praising the bravery of its ATS members under fire: Gunner Edwina Mills, Lance-Bombardier Alma Wilson, and especially Gunner Emily Walcott, '22-year-old West Indies girl' and formerly 'a dancer in Lew Lake's "Junior Blackbirds"' (Express, 3). Gunner Walcott, a radio-location operator, was knocked off her feet by bomb blast.

While on the floor, badly shaken, she began to switch off the power, got to her feet, and, with her girl co-operator, switched off the voltage.

Said the battery commander: "By her action she saved the crew from being exposed to danger of being electrocuted."

None of the German raids were heavy; instead, The Times's air correspondent suggests,

the enemy resumed his old policy of scattered raids by one or two aircraft, probably with the object of allowing German propagandists to announce that widespread attacks has been made.

The Minister for Home Security, Herbert Morrison, spoke to Shoreditch civil defence workers yesterday, saying (2):

Now the Nazis are taking it. Not with the fortitude of our people, but with the whining which we are accustomed to hear from the bully who is given a taste of his own medicine. Our aerial counter-offensive has continued the attack on the heart of industrial Germany: the factories, the docks, and the shipyards. Now comes the Nazi answer -- Hitler's blow for blow -- Bath, Norwich, York. A gem of Regency architecture for a U-boat base, an ancient church for a shipyard, old and beautiful monuments for a Heinkel works. These are not the replies of a man who carefully plans a strategic campaign. They are the frenzied blows of a mad lout who, stung by the carefully timed and aimed blows of a cool and skilful opponent, loses all self-control and runs amuck.

An article in the Daily Mirror by E. H. Christian assesses the civil defence response to the recent German raids (2). In general the tale is a happy one, reflected in the headline 'Renewed air raids found us ready':

Every service that can be put on wheels has been rushed to the aid of stricken towns -- mobile Assistance Board units, mobile restaurants, post and pensions offices, and inquiry and advice bureaux [...] Stores of food and clothing -- held at strategic points in the various regions -- have been quickly rushed where they were required. Increased provision of surface shelters has proved invaluable.

However, outside the organised civil defence services, many people appear to have become lax:

volunteer firewatching, the provision of sand bins and buckets of water at each house, and the keeping of emergency kits are precautions that have been sadly neglected by far too many people.

Anderson shelters have not been maintained so are 'almost unusable'; gas masks are 'almost an unknown sight' in some of the towns recently blitzed.

The moral for everyone is not to feel too safe. Don't depend on the Civil Defence services until you have completed your own precautions.

The Mirror also has this little paragraph on the front page, with the headline '9th Day of Blitz':

But it's referring, not to the German blitz on Britain, but the British blitz on Germany (or northern France, rather). And it's referring to daylight attacks, for as The Times notes, 'For the first time since April 21 there was no night activity by our bombers' (4). It goes on to explain that

Decision as to whether bombers shall be sent out or kept at home on any particular night is a matter for the Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command, and his decision may depend on any of a number of considerations. For instance, though the weather may be good over this country, it does not necessarily follow that it is good over Germany; or the weather forecasts may indicate early morning fog at the time our bombers would be returning to their bases. For that reason, the final word must be with the Commander-in-Chief and his staff, who are in possession of facts which cannot be known to anyone outside the command.

And that Commander-in-Chief is 'Air Marshal Arthur Travers Harris, who reached his 50th birthday a month ago, the man behind our attacks on Rostock and Lubeck, on Augsburg and the Renault and Matford works around Paris' (Express, 2). Basil Cardew paints a brief pen-portrait of Harris, who took over Bomber Command on 25 February this year, in today's Express:

He wants to be getting on with the job all the time, personally and by direct action. In an airplane he will not be piloted, but takes the controls himself. In his car he is impatient of being driven and takes over the wheel himself.

He has no time to waste, this shrewd dynamo of air strategy.

While allowing that 'His approach to a problem may seem disconcerting to the official mind' and 'So, too, do his abrupt questions seem unless the man he is talking to really knows his job', Cardew thinks Harris can 'bridge the gap' between the planners and the aircrew:

His decisions have a quality of action. You can feel the stamp of his mind on the dash across Germany to Augsburg. And there is no doubt that bomber crews feel this -- that their commander is mere figure spinning plans in an inaccessible headquarters. He is a man with the same cast of thought as themselves.

In Cardew's opinion, Harris 'is a first-class commander in a good English tradition, downright like Fisher, abrupt like Wellington'.

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

]]> http://airminded.org/2012/05/02/saturday-2-may-1942/feed/ 2 http://airminded.org/2012/04/27/monday-27-april-1942/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=monday-27-april-1942 http://airminded.org/2012/04/27/monday-27-april-1942/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:38:04 +0000 Brett Holman http://airminded.org/?p=9357

Just at the moment, this war seems mainly to be an air war. The main news today is that Rostock has been bombed for the third night in a row. In addition Stirling bombers carried out a low-level raid on the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia, and six targets in northern France were were attacked by bombers with strong fighter escorts. As the Yorkshire Post reports on its front page:

ROSTOCK has become symbolic of our new air offensive. On Saturday night and yesterday morning the harbour and aircraft works were attacked for the third successive night, by a strong force of bombers, with great results. That was not all. The famous Skoda armament works in Czechoslovakia were the target for the R.A.F. on an all-round flight of 1,400 miles.

Yesterday more attacking flights crossed the Channel for various destinations in this great opening of the Allied offensive.

The damage done to German war production by the Rostock raids is confidently predicted to be enormous:

The Heinkel aircraft factory would turn out many squadrons per week in an effort to overcome the Luftwaffe's shortage of fights. The factory is now a heap of ruins. The shipyard is badly damaged and the Neptune submarine construction slips are broken up [...] The output must have ceased. The attack was heavier than at Luebeck, where production has entirely stopped.

A German communique claimed that Friday night's attack on Rostock was 'directed against residential districts'; of the one on Saturday night the German News Agency said that 'There was considerable damage to houses and losses in dead and injured' (Manchester Guardian, 5).

This offensive combined with the RAF's attacks on the coast of occupied France is forcing Germany 'into depleting the Luftwaffe strength in Russia':

Our air initiative is imposing defence on the enemy and may impose limitations of a serious nature on Hitler's coming blow at Russia.

The Guardian's air correspondent detects a significant weakening of Germany's air defences. The operations over France are like a reverse Battle of Britain, only the British are losing far fewer aircraft, which 'shows plainly that the German intercepter-fighter is insufficient to combat the powerful British forces'. So too the 'small ratio of losses' suffered by Bomber Command in the Rostock raids 'points to a similar dwindling strength of the Luftwaffe in Germany herself'. With its 'commitments on Germany's Eastern front and in Libya' the Luftwaffe is being stretched too thin.

'WE are opening a second front in the West', says the leading article in the Yorkshire Post today (2), 'a second front in the air'. What are the broader effects of the RAF air campaign against Germany? In his big speech yesterday, Hitler gave himself supreme legal powers 'which set him above the law courts and place every German citizen completely at his mercy' (Daily Express, 1). 'At such a time', he said, 'no one is entitled to talk of his rights. Today only duties exist'. There will be no more holidays. Lenient judges will be dismissed. Guy Eden, political correspondent for the Express, believes Hitler has had 'to display the iron hand' like this largely because of Bomber Command:

Smashing air raids on German towns -- so heavy that it was not thought prudent to conceal from the German people the damage done -- has increased depression and discontent.

RAF air raids are also given by Morley Richards as one reason for the renewed German peace feelers rumoured to have been put out in Stockholm and Ankara in recent weeks.

Further testimony to the effect which Bomber Command is believed to be having on the war comes from the way it has been enlisted in the Express's anti-waste campaign. The objective is 'to save ten million tons of coal, without rationing' (3). On this 'Fuel Front', people are being encouraged to share their neighbours fires for warmth rather than start their own, or go to bed half an hour earlier each night. Another example is that 'Mothers are going to appoint one of their children "Family Light Switcher-off"'. To remind people to switch off lights and heaters when not needed the Express has provided some little labels to stick above their light switches, with slogans (sent in by readers) such as 'WASTE delays victory' and 'Careless GAS helps the enemy'. The one shown above reads:

LUBECK'S lights are out 40%
WHAT ABOUT YOURS?

This is a reference to the 40% of Lübeck's old town which was destroyed by Bomber Command last month.

But otherwise, apart from a RAF 'offensive' in the Middle East (including a night raid on Benghazi harbour) which the Times reports (3), most of the running in the air war seems to be being made by the Axis. Unusually, after the string of raids on unnamed southwest towns in recent days (and there was another one yesterday just before dawn, which did 'Considerable damage' in a working class area, along with another town in the west of England and one in Scotland's northeast, where a four-year-old girl was killed; Guardian, 5, and a fighter-bomber attack on a south coast town) today's papers have a named target to focus on. As the Daily Mirror's back page headline screams (8):

BATH GUNNED BY HUNS IN NIGHT BLITZ

BATH, quiet residential city, home of invalids and evacuees, suffered heavily as Luftwaffe dive bombers roared down on Saturday night and early yesterday releasing bombs on churches, historic buildings and houses.

The former mayoress of Bath, Mrs J. L. Langworthy, was one of the victims; she was due to marry on Wednesday next. (Her trousseau was also destroyed.) A nine-year-old boy tunnelled to freedom from the ruins of his home while singing jazz songs. Four churches were hit and a row of Georgian terraces destroyed; 'loss of life is feared' after hits on shelters and houses.

Why Bath? Berlin radio claimed that 'high British staffs are stationed' there, but it also described the attacks as 'continuous reprisal raids' for the bombing of 'residential quarters, cultural monuments and welfare establishments in old German towns'. That Bath was attacked in reprisal is commonly accepted (though the Yorkshire Post calls it a 'Spite Raid', 1). Montague Lacey in the Daily Express sees the Bath blitz as Hitler's attempt to create maximum terror with limited means (1):

1. -- He did not expect the old watering place to be so well defended as an industrial city.
2. -- He went after a city with many evacuees, hoping that his blow would resound through England.
3. -- He selected a small, compact city with the idea that there the limited number of bombers he could spare would do most damage.

In fact he counted on causing massacre in a city unprepared.

In fact, though admittedly 'Casualties are rather heavy' Lacey contends that both civil and air defences did well. That's reassuring, as it must be difficult for be prepared for air raids when they so rarely come these days, the more so in a town with little experience of bombing. (The Yorkshire Post, 5, reports that 'Yorkshire Towns Will Stand a Blitz').

The bombing doesn't end there. There's a litany of air raids: German air raids on besieged Leningrad; Japanese air raids on Darwin (where eight out of twenty-four bombers were shot down), Port Moresby in New Guinea and Tulagi in the Solomons. 'Malta and Corregidor, the two most-blitzed islands in the world, have exchanged messages telling of their defiance and hope' (Express, 1). According to the Times's Mandalay correspondent (4):

To-day many of the cities, towns, and villages of Burma are blasted by Japanese bombs. Misery and desolation have spread through lower and central Burma, while the shadows of war ever lengthen over the country.

Refugees -- and now they are not only Indians -- stream along the road leading out of the country, taking with them only the barest necessities.

It's a bomber's war.

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

]]> http://airminded.org/2012/04/27/monday-27-april-1942/feed/ 4 http://airminded.org/2012/04/23/thursday-23-april-1942/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thursday-23-april-1942 http://airminded.org/2012/04/23/thursday-23-april-1942/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:23:51 +0000 Brett Holman http://airminded.org/?p=9279

Most newspapers today lead with the story of a successful Commando raid on the French coast near Boulogne early yesterday morning -- though only the Daily Mirror (above), rather bizarrely, focuses on the fact that 'All wore gym shoes' (1) (apart from the ex-Limehouse police inspector who wore slippers). More colour is provided by the dashing Lord Lovat who led the raid wearing 'the bonnet of his own Lovat Scouts, a body of Highland deerstalkers [...] whose training is ideal for Commando work'. The purpose of the raid is not clear -- the official communique only says it was a reconnaissance mission -- so it's hard to say if it achieved its objective. Perhaps the aim was to tie up German cement supplies:

SO greatly do the Germans fear Commando raids and invasion that they have earmarked more than half the French production of cement -- about one and a quarter million tons a year -- for use on new defence works along the coast.

But in purely operational terms the raid seems to have been a success (8):

Remarkable from the military point of view was that, after spending two hours on enemy-occupied territory, every man was withdrawn with arms. Our casualties were negligible.

The Navy, which delivered and retrieved the Commandos, also got away largely unscathed, and damaged two armed German trawlers in the process.

There is plenty of other war news, of course, but nothing nearly so spectacular. The Times actually leads with the announcement in Delhi by Colonel Louis Johnson, President Roosevelt's personal representative, that 'United States troops are already in India and that more will be coming' (4). Reading more closely, however, these 'troops' appear to be only a 'technical mission', the functions of which are

to collect data, to make industrial explorations, to furnish technical experts if wanted, and to make recommendations to President Roosevelt, and to assist in applying these recommendations in India to the extent that Indian industries desired.

Johnson didn't disparage Indian production but did say that it was still on a peacetime footing. Since British forces are still retreating in Burma -- today it is announced that they have 'completed their withdrawal across the river Pinchaung, "not without some loss of personnel and equipment"' -- that will obviously have to change.

The Russian front is largely quiescent, the Times reports, as 'operations have been brought to a standstill by the vast mudfield, which, like so many things in Russia, is easily the largest in the world'. Germany is however still attacking on the Leningrad front,

where the [German] soldiers in some parts are obliged to stand in flooded trenches with water up to their hips, and where during the nights their coats freeze into a sort of ice armour as the soldiers frequently sink into the water breast-high. It is obvious from such descriptions that little progress is possible at present even along the railways, as troops and arms crowd to them.

The main activity is in the north, where a Russian offensive against the Finns is reportedly 'continuous and heavy' and in the south, where it is thought that the 22nd Panzer Division has been redeployed from France to the Crimea.

Much further south (and east), in New Guinea, it's a lot warmer. The Times relays a report from Allied headquarters in Melbourne that a Japanese air raid on Port Moresby, the twenty-sixth so far, was carried out by 'eight enemy bombers with a fighter escort on Tuesday morning':

Our fighters 'intercepted the enemy brilliantly,' and destroy four '0' type aircraft. We had no losses. Our air force attacked wharves and buildings at Rabaul on Tuesday, starting numerous fires.

A recent article in the Times on the growing closeness between Australia and the United States seems to have provoked some reaction in Australia -- well, at least from the Times's Canberra correspondent, who asserts that this is 'dictated primarily by the facts of world geography [...] Australia is America's obvious base for an ultimate counter-offensive' against Japan (3). The correspondent seeks to reassure British readers that Australians still retain 'ties of sentiment and culture with the Mother Country', as well as 'an economic bond', but pleads for Britain to do more to cultivate the relationship:

The United Kingdom has a tremendous stake in this country, not the least important in which is the affection and gratitude of millions of the best Australians. Every day there is more and more evidence of the wisdom of doing something to protect it if only it be by keeping Australians supplied with facts which would enable them to get a balanced picture of the world scene. A word in season now and then from people in high places addresses directly to Australia is greatly needed. The job should not be left exclusively to Australians who realize this need.

A number of newspapers today carry a story presenting an overview of the bomber war -- no doubt derived from the same Air Ministry briefing. The one in the Yorkshire Post opens by noting that in the period 20 March to 20 April (it actually says 30 April, which still is in the future, but the Manchester Guardian says 20 April), 'under 200 enemy aircraft crossed the coasts of Great Britain by night, and the tonnage of the bombs dropped was nearer 250 than 300' (3).

In the same period we dropped on Germany in one week more than 1,000 tons of bombs, and there were at least six nights on each of which the tonnage dropped there exceeded the Luftwaffe's 'British' total for the month.

Bomber Command has 'suffered some regrettable losses in our European attacks this year', but 'our wastage is not unduly heavy when the scale of recent attacks in taken into account'. Indeed, during the same period 'the Axis' lost more aircraft in its attacks on Malta than the RAF lost in its attacks on Germany, 140 to 112. It is suggested that the the efforts of the 'New British Broadcasting Station' (which pretends to be a British radio station but is actually German black propaganda) to deny the damage done to Germany (as well as in the recent American raid on Tokyo) rather suggests the opposite:

'We should know better than anyone,' said the station after the attack on Tokyo, 'that the bombardment of towns cannot bring the end of the war nearer. London withstood about as heavy a bombardment which could be launched, something compared with the raid on Tokyo cannot have been more than a pinprick.

'The proper use of aircraft is to support land forces in the actual battle zone, and as the R.A.F. is not large enough to fulfil all its tasks, it should be reserved for this purpose only. A daylight raid on Augsburg, for instance, may be spectacular but its practical value is negligible.'

While the Post allows that it can't be assumed that Germany 'could not concentrate a fairly heavy attack on some British target',

There is no evidence, however, that the Luftwaffe is being strengthened at present on the Western Front, and sensational stories which have gained currency concerning big reinforcements of air-borne troops and so forth are known to not have any basis of truth.

On that note, the Guardian reports (5) that

Nazi raiders dropped bombs last night near a town in South-west England. They fell in open country and there are no reports of casualties or damage.

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

]]> http://airminded.org/2012/04/23/thursday-23-april-1942/feed/ 4 http://airminded.org/2012/03/24/as-it-was/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=as-it-was http://airminded.org/2012/03/24/as-it-was/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:04:02 +0000 Brett Holman http://airminded.org/?p=9090

Don Charlwood's No Moon Tonight has a reputation as one of the best Bomber Command memoirs. Charlwood was a Victorian who joined the RAAF in 1941, trained as a navigator in Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme, and then flew in Halifaxes and Lancasters with 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds. Having survived his tour of 30 ops in 1942 and 1943, he stayed in aviation after the war, albeit on the ground as a civil air traffic controller. No Moon Tonight was originally published in 1956 and was the first of more than a dozen books by Charlwood, some memoirs, some aviation history, some Victorian history. In 1986 he wrote that the book was 'kindly received both in Australia and Britain', and that 'letters from ex-aircrew men of various nationalities began to tell me I had not been alone in my response to the Bomber Command experience'. It's one aspect of that response I'm interested in here: his feelings about the morality of area bombing.

Charlwood wrote himself that this had been one of his reasons for writing No Moon Tonight:

I wanted to give some thought to the morality of the task we were called upon to do -- something that after the war led to widespread condemnation of the bomber offensive.

It's not a question that he ever gives a final judgement on, or even really tries to weigh up; but it does from time to time puncture the narrative with great force. Often it is tied up with the fear of death, his own and that of his comrades. This is a theme which is much in evidence throughout the book, much more so than the morality of area bombing per se, as he notes the loss of other members of his squadron and, which touched him more deeply, of many of the 'Twenty Men', as he called them, his fellow Australian classmates from Canada: twelve were killed flying for Bomber Command.

Charlwood initially questions whether area bombing was just enough to justify the deaths of so many good Allied airmen, not enemy civilians. For example, shortly after joining 103 Squadron, before starting on ops himself (apart from one during operational training), Charlwood learns that another Halifax crew has gone missing after a raid on Cologne. Although he only knew their navigator, Munns, slightly, he knew he was a family man and he starts to brood over the loss (I've added the bold emphasis in all the quotations which follow):

In ten years, would the loss of his [Munns's] life appear justifiable, or would it be evident that he had been led into a wrong or unnecessary course, that he had cast the pearl of his life before swine? Perhaps the only man who should go to Bomber Command was the man who had seen for himself that mass killing was the only way to a better world.

I knew, that day, that I had no such conviction. I felt in need of it. I wished that I could believe that we were bombing evil and making way for good. I wished that I could feel this with the intensity that a father would feel in defending his family with no thought of himself. The only alternative was not to think. We had committed ourselves and could now do nothing. If our service life conflicted with our thinking then our thinking must cease. We could not afford to fritter our strength on endless questioning, or in the luxury of frustration or sorrow.

Similarly, being on ops didn't change his feelings about bombing, but being part of a crew did change how he dealt with them: essentially, he had to suppress them. Late in the winter of 1942-3, Max Bryant, one of the Twenty Men, is posted to Elsham. After talking to Max about squadron life, Charlwood realises that he has found what he never had before, something he calls 'enthusiasm':

I still had little belief in the rectitude of our war or any other war, nor could I believe that more good than evil would arise from our mass bombing. That Keith [Webber] and Wilf Burrows and Col Miller and now, probably, Max himself should die, was still something too ghastly to contemplate. And yet, on the squadron one could not for long admit cynicism, or pessimism, even in the face of the worst. Whatever my frame of mind had been when we had come to Elsham, I realized that now it had changed. Then I had been alone; now I had become one with a crew and a squadron. To demean them was impossible.

Thoughts of what they were actually doing to the people below sometimes intruded during operations. Sort of. Here is Charlwood on an attack on Essen, I think on the night of 13 January 1943. (The photo above was taken of Essen's centre after a raid on 5 March.)

I would try to tell myself then that this was a city, a place inhabited by beings such as ourselves, a place with the familiar sights of civilization. But the thought would carry little conviction. A German city was always this, this hellish picture of flame, gunfire and searchlights, an unreal picture because we could not hear it or feel its breath. Sometimes, when the smoke rolled back and we saw streets or buildings, I felt startled. Perhaps if we had seen the white, upturned faces of people, as over England we sometimes did, our hearts would have rebelled....

That last sentence suggests that, in fact, their hearts did not rebel. They were still troubled, though. Of a raid on Turin on the night of 4 February 1943, Charlwood wrote:

We looked down incredulously. Under the light of the moon the city was mercilessly exposed -- houses, churches, gardens, even statuary along the streets. The crews wheeled and dived, exulting as the Germans exulted over lightly-defended Britain in 1940. And yet, perhaps the minds of the attackers would have been easier if the Italians had attempted to defend their city. As it was, we blew women and children to pieces, unopposed by their men.

To say 'we blew women and children to pieces' is quite explicit. It's almost self-incriminating, except that the blame is displaced onto Italian men for failing to defend their women and children. If it wasn't for that, Charlwood seems to say, he would have felt much better about blowing the women and children of Turin to pieces.

After completing his tour, Charlwood was posted to Lichfield as a navigation instructor. From this period, early summer 1943, he quotes a letter from another of the Twenty Men, Johnnie Gordon, who also has finished his first tour. Gordon is even blunter about his qualms:

'Sometimes my conscience troubles me about the blind mass-murdering of the "main force". I think Bomber Command's policy is fixed too relentlessly on mere victory by annihilation. That is impossible. Britain at present seems to lack men who can look beyond the victory. I think Bomber Command's policy, though it makes the victory more certain and earlier, may make a real peace impossible.'

Here, the 'blind mass-murdering of the "main force"' (the heavy bomber groups which comprised the bulk of Bomber Command), which used area bombing tactics, is implicitly contrasted with the precision bombing of the Pathfinders and, even more, 617 Squadron, which had spectacularly broken the Ruhr dams only a month or two before. In fact soon afterwards, Gordon turns up in Lichfield on leave and tells Charlwood that he has volunteered for another tour, this time with the Dam Busters. Charlwood asks him straight out what he thinks of area bombing (which he usually refers to as 'mass bombing'):

'What is your opinion of the mass bombing the main force do?' I said.

'I don't like it,' he answered. 'I suppose it achieves its purpose, but it's wrong. Now it has reached fantastic proportions and we haven't anyone big enough to stop it. I suppose it will go on until all the beauty and culture are bombed out of Europe.'

Later Gordon asks Charlwood why he thinks he volunteered for 617 Squadron:

'[...] Why do you think I volunteered for special duties? Tell me honestly now. I have such a poor opinion of my own motives that I won't mind what you say.'

I said, 'It might have been because you believed mass bombing to be wrong and this move was perhaps a sort of atonement. That and the fascination of ops life.'

Nowhere in this section does Charlwood indicate his own opinion of area bombing, whether he agreed with his friend's critique or not. He himself tried unsuccessfully to get back onto ops with a regular squadron, but tellingly only as part of his old crew: comradeship was more important than life or death, his own or others.

Because No Moon Tonight was written in the decade after the war, it is difficult to know to what extent Charlwood's memory of his thoughts and feelings during it might have changed by the time he came to set them down in writing. 1956 was not 1943 and, whether consciously or not, events in the years in between might have introduced biases. As noted above, he himself referred to 'widespread condemnation of the bomber offensive' after the war as a reason why he discussed the morality question. That could have led him to give more weight to it in his book than he had done during the war itself. (Though 'widespread condemnation' strikes me as more characteristic of the 1980s, when he wrote those words, than the 1950s, and more of Britain than Australia.)

The passage about 617 Squadron and the suggestion that it carried out a less morally suspect form of strategic bombing is also interesting. The film version of The Dam Busters came out in 1955, the year before Charlwood's book, and was a big success in Australia as in Britain. Perhaps, just as Charlwood suggested Gordon joined the Dam Busters as an atonement, the success of the film functioned as a sort of atonement by proxy for him. But he doesn't mention the film (or Paul Brickhill's book) so that's only speculation on my part.

Finally, one postwar context which can be glimpsed in No Moon Tonight is the Cold War. Of the briefing before his crew's final op, Charlwood writes:

Burton and Harding his Canadian navigator peered at the screen, listening to the usual recitation of defences, Pathfinder plans and weather. So it would go on after tonight had passed; so it might go on for another generation in another war against another enemy.

In 1956, 'another war against another enemy' was very much a possibility. The wartime alliance had fractured into opposing camps. The former enemy had itself been split into two: in May 1955 West Germany was admitted into NATO and the same month East Germany became a founding member of the Warsaw Pact. A war would have been fought with new weapons: both the United States and the Soviet Union now had hydrogen bombs, the latter first testing its version in 1955. But Charlwood's intuition that the same scenes he had witnessed would be reenacted probably wasn't too far off the mark: the year before Sputnik, nukes were still carried by bombers. Not long after Charlwood's No Moon Tonight was published and not many miles away, Nevil Shute would have been writing On The Beach. Is it fanciful to suggest that in his own way Charlwood was responding to the same existential threat to civilisation as Shute?

Charlwood did keep a wartime diary, which he quoted from occasionally, both here and probably in Journeys Into Night (which I haven't read, but is based on the diaries and letters of The Twenty). The State Library of Victoria holds a copy of his diary; if I'm there with a spare hour or two I must have a look at it.