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A quiet riot

2 March 2012 in 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Books, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics by Brett Holman | 13 comments

Well, not quiet so much as oddly obscure...

In his Behind the Smoke Screen (1934), probably the most influential book written on the theory of a knock-out blow from the air, P. R. C. Groves related the following story of angry civilians attacking an RFC aerodrome after an air raid, because they felt they had not been defended adequately:

On several occasions such attacks from the air were followed by episodes indicative of high nervous tension among sections of the public. One of the worst, to which for obvious reasons no reference was made in the Press at the time, occurred at Hythe where, after the raid on May 25th, 1917, a mob invaded a local aerodrome, stoned the mechanics and attempted to wreck the hangars, because the Royal Air Force [sic] unit had not protected the town. As a matter of fact the unit in question was a training school and did not possess a single machine capable of reaching the raiders.

Along with deaths caused by panic-stricken crowds rushing for shelter and the nightly trekking of people from cities to countryside when an air raid was anticipated, Groves uses this incident as evidence for the fragility of civilian morale under aerial bombardment, with the implication that such things would happen on a far greater scale in the next war. But did it really happen like that? Groves doesn't give a source, and while he was in the RFC himself, in May 1917 he was a staff officer in the Middle East. He wouldn't have had any direct or official knowledge of a riot at Hythe.
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Acquisitions

24 February 2012 in Acquisitions, Books by Brett Holman | 2 comments

Peter Adey. Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. The title isn't very revealing of its contents. But here's a partial list of the topics covered: airminded youth groups such as the Air Defence Cadet Corps and the Skybird League (chapter 2), air shows including Hendon (chapter 3), the birth of aerial surveying (chapter 4), RAF pilot selection techniques (chapter 5), wartime experiments on the effects of bomb-blast on buildings and bodies (chapter 6), the effectiveness of ARP drills (chapter 7). There is even room for scareships! While it is framed as cultural geography the history looks solid and this book should interest anyone interested in British airmindedness.

Susan R. Grayzel. At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. As will this one, which is even closer to my own particular interests. In fact the topic is broadly that of my PhD thesis and my book; and if it had been published ten or even five years ago I probably would have picked something else to do! Having said that, I think our approaches are sufficiently different not to make my book redundant: at first glance, hers is more cultural history with some political history, mine is more intellectual history with some cultural history. Plus, mine has scareships. Still, I'm both looking forward to and dreading reading this...

The international air force and the Inner Government of the World

22 February 2012 in 1920s, 1930s, Books, International air force, Periodicals by Brett Holman | No comments

Here's something I didn't know before. In 1939, an Indian chemistry professor and Theosophist named D. D. Kanga edited a collection of articles entitled Where Theosophy and Science Meet: A Stimulus to Modern Thought. One of the articles was by Peter Freeman, who had been a Labour MP from Wales between 1929 and 1931 (and would be again from 1945 until his death in 1956). He had also been general secretary of the Welsh branch of the Theosophical Society since 1922. His contribution to Kanga's volume was entitled 'The practical application of Theosophy to politics and government'; I'm not sure when it was originally published, assuming it wasn't written specially for this volume, but it would probably be the early to mid-1930s.

Freeman's basic premise is that of Theosophy: that the universe and everything in it is evolving in accordance with what he calls '"the Plan"'. This applies to societies too, 'in the gradual civilization and progress of humanity towards its destined end -- the full realization of Universal Brotherhood'. But this process is helped along both by enlightened people (e.g. Theosophists) and by 'a body of super-men, the Masters [...] who, having passed through the many stages of life, are now competent to help and guide the affairs of the earth'.

These evolved men are known as the Great White Brotherhood, or the Inner Government of the World. All forms of government on earth are but pale reflections of their activities, nevertheless everyone can assist, in however humble a manner, in their mighty task of bringing about the perfection of all life.

In this spirit, Freeman asked:

What are the immediate political steps that should be taken to secure World Peace and to establish the Brotherhood of Man?

His answer was that 'a World Power acting on behalf of the League of Nations' was required, so that nations would feel secure and consent to disarmament.
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Am I fake or not? -- III

15 February 2012 in 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Aircraft, Blogging and tweeting, Books, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | 2 comments

Gotha raid, 7 July 1917

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

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

8 February 2012 in 1930s, Art, Books, Civil defence, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | 21 comments

The doom of cities

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."

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Acquisitions

3 February 2012 in Acquisitions, Books by Brett Holman | No comments

Ronnie Scott, ed. The Real 'Dad's Army': The War Diaries of Col. Rodney Foster. London: Virago, 2011. Foster was a retired Indian Army officer who commanded a Home Guard company in Kent in the Second World War. Looks interesting: takes a lively interest in the progress of the war, but is also engaged with his local community; has a liking for double exclamation marks. What clinched it for me was the first sentence of the entry for 16 July 1944: 'Robots came over at regular intervals all morning from 10 a.m.'

Counter-revolution from above

2 February 2012 in 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Air control, Australia, Books, Periodicals by Brett Holman | 15 comments

In the middle of the First World War, the Australian government found itself preoccupied with the possibility of civil unrest, perhaps even rebellion. In December 1916 the Hughes government passed the Unlawful Associations Act, which proscribed the Australian branch of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Wobblies had campaigned strongly against conscription in the October referendum, and proscription was Hughes's revenge for the No vote. But more than that, he believed that every IWW member was armed, and that many were of German extraction and thus potentially treasonous. Determined to be prepared for any eventuality, by the start of February 1917, the government had assembled 900 armed men, chosen for their political reliability, in each state's capital city, backed up with a machine gun. Melbourne, as the national capital, was the best defended. It had an AIF infantry battalion, a reserve company, the District Guard, two 18-pounder guns, two machine-gun sections, and 50 light-horsemen.

It also had two aeroplanes at its disposal, for 'their great moral effect':

(a) To overawe rioters by their presence in the air.
(b) To cooperate with the Artillery.
(c) To assist in dispersing the rioters by the use of machine guns and revolvers and by dropping bombs or hand grenades.

What was that last part again?

To assist in dispersing the rioters by the use of machine guns and revolvers and by dropping bombs or hand grenades.

I find this quite extraordinary, that an Australian government was preparing to strafe and bomb its own citizens for the crime of rioting. That's the sort of thing that dictators do. But should I be surprised? Let's look at some similar cases from around the same time.
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Death from the skies

25 January 2012 in 1930s, Air defence, Art, Books, Civil defence, Film, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures by Brett Holman | 13 comments

Death from the skies

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 was it -- 1935 and '6, wasn't it?"

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The wooden bombs return

21 January 2012 in 1940s, Books, Interviews, Pictures, Rumours, Videos by Brett Holman | 16 comments

I received this request for assistance from Jean Dewaerheid, a Belgian writer who is working with Peter Haas and Pierre-Antoine Courouble to track down wooden bomb eyewitnesses:

Three authors (from Belgium, Germany and France) have been working for years on a bizarre subject: the dropping of dummy wooden bombs on wooden airplanes.

In order to deceive the Allies during the Second World War, the Germans built fake airfields on the continent, often with runways and sometimes with buildings, but always with fake wooden planes, called "Attrappen". Strange stories can be heard in which allied airplanes made fun of them by dropping wooden bombs on which they had sometimes painted remarks like "Wood for Wood".

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Acquisitions

13 January 2012 in Acquisitions, Books by Brett Holman | No comments

Herbert A. Johnson. Wingless Eagle: U.S. Army Aviation through World War I. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Looks at not just the actual flying stuff (the first flights, the expedition against Pancho Villa, the expansion for war) but the media portrayal of such (e.g. chapter 2, 'Army aviation in the media fishbowl'). So I think it will be very much to my taste; not bad for a bargain table find!

Helen M. Kinsella. The Image before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian. Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2011. As the title suggests it's not really the sort of book you turn to for who said (or did) what to whom and why; it's also written by a political scientist, not a historian, but we'll let that pass. Starts with medieval codes of warfare but mostly concentrates on the 20th century, especially the 1949 IV Geneva Convention and the 1977 Protocol to it.

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