The title of this little series is a nod to David Walker's Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1939. As the title suggests, Walker argues that Australia's relationship with Asia in the decades before and after Federation was largely characterised by fear about immigration, imports and invasion. Peter Stanley, in Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, fleshes out the last of these fears through a discussion of novels and books from the 1930s which discussed the prospect of war with Japan (or at least an unnamed or Ruritanian Asian enemy). For example, in Erle Cox's Fool's Harvest (1938/1939), Australia is attacked and invaded by 'Cambasia' in September 1939, beginning with a massive air raid on Sydney which causes 200,000 civilian casualties. Britain is unable to help, as it has been attacked by Germany, Italy and France; a British fleet at Singapore is sunk. The Australian armed forces are ill-equipped to defend the nation, and after a month Cambasia is victorious at the last battle of the war, at Seymour in central Victoria. A resistance movement is eventually suppressed after increasingly brutal reprisals. The south-eastern part of Australia eventually regains a limited independence in 1966, but the majority of the population still labours under the Cambasian yoke.

But I've also been reading Augustine Meaher's The Australian Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayal. Meaher argues that Australians were not in fact particularly concerned about Japan in the 1930s. The few attempts at warning the public and the elites were confused and ineffectual; the armed forces were too busy fighting with each other to seriously think about fighting Japan. Even the start of the Sino-Japanese war and events like the Nanking Massacre didn't seem to cause any great alarm. And it must be said that Walker's account of the 1930s doesn't do much to contradict this. He focuses on the increasing interest of Australian elites in closer ties with Asia and the Pacific, rather than the fears which had preoccupied earlier generations. At the risk of caricature, Meaher's thesis is that Australians weren't too worried about the Japanese threat; and Stanley's is that they were too worried.

Meaher is convincing on his core argument: that Britain never promised it would be able to defend Australia under all circumstances and that Australia misunderstood the consequent need to invest in its own defences. But I do wonder if he is too quick to dismiss those efforts which were made to warn Australians of the Japanese threat, though. For example, I don't think he discusses the famous refusal of dock workers in 1938 to load iron onto ships bound for Japan, explicitly for the reason that it might come back in the form of bombs. This idea must have come from somewhere. He argues persuasively that the press and the ruling elites were ill-equipped to provide cogent analyses of Australia's strategic situation; the few attempts which were made were usually simplistic where they weren't plain silly. The depth of debate about strategic affairs does seem very poor when compared with Britain.

Still, that doesn't mean such debate as existed was without effect. Stanley describes Fool's Harvest as 'hugely popular' and notes that it was first serialised in the Melbourne Argus, one of the nation's leading newspapers. It also seems to be a good example of a novelist popularising the ideas of more serious thinkers, as Thomas Blamey advised Cox on the military side of things. Blamey had been Monash's chief of staff in France during the last war and at this time was in charge of recruitment for the Citizen Military Force (i.e. the Militia) and a regular commentator for the ABC on military and foreign affairs. The same sort of nexus between next-war novelists, military intellectuals and the press could be found in Britain, though by this time such blatant le Queux-like propagandising was no longer common. It looks to me like there was at least a nascent next-war literature by the late 1930s.

On the other hand, I put that that question mark in the title of these posts before I read Meaher's book. That's because I was concerned that I was projecting forwards my (not particularly deep) knowledge of the fear of Japan in the first decades after Federation, and backwards my (also not particularly deep) knowledge of the fear of Japanese invasion in 1942, as exemplified by the wonderful piece of scaremongering at the start of this post. But it's also because it didn't look like the mystery aeroplane sightings I'm looking at here can simply be put down to fear of Japan. I'll tackle that in a final post in this series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional image source: The Retronaut.

This advertisement was placed by the Air League in The Times, 11 June 1940, on page 9 (it also appeared in the Daily Telegraph). The British Expeditionary Force had been ejected from France just a week before; Germany now occupied Belgium and the Netherlands. France was still fighting, but Paris had been declared an open city, and with Italy entering the war its position seemed hopeless. The RAF had evidently not been able to hold back the Luftwaffe, now only a few minutes' flight from British soil, and this is where the Air League came in. It pointed out that

For years the Air League warned the country of the importance of air power. [...] Now is the time for renewed effort and new resolves. Resolve to-day that so long as any danger exists you will use every effort to keep the Royal Air Force strong enough after the war to deter any aggressor from threatening our peace [...] If you support the Air League you can make it your means of ensuring that never again will our country get into a position of inferiority in the air.

I wonder how far away the Air League thought 'after the war' was: years, months, weeks? Given that no money was being solicited (and the advertising itself was expensive), that would seem to suggest sooner rather than later: few people would feel obliged to keep such a pledge made years earlier under different circumstances. J. A. Chamier, the Secretary-General of the Air League whose idea it was, was a fascist fellow-traveller, so we may presume did not wish to fight Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy any longer than necessary. But then again to call for Britain to maintain its airpower at a high level after an armistice, say, is not treasonous. Whether this position is defeatist is debatable, though I tend to think it is, a little.

Note the distinctly petulant tone:

More public support would have made its [the Air League's] warnings more effective [...] The Air League, which founded Empire Air Day and the Air Defence Cadet Corps has never been adequately supported by the public.

I.e., dear British people: if you idiots had listened to us in the first place we wouldn't be in this mess. Did this hectoring work? Though the Air League asked for a million pledges, by October it had received about 500, not an insignificant number compared to its total membership (before the war, in the low thousands) but not a lot either, when the immense gratitude people felt for the RAF after the Battle of Britain is taken into account.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fourth RAF Pageant took place on Saturday, 30 June 1923. The 'turn of the afternoon', as in the previous year, was 'another little Eastern drama, based on actual happenings during the War'. Once more the Wottnotts were the enemy, and once more the co-operation of air and ground forces was the theme. The main difference with 1922 was that this time the RAF was coming to the aid of a besieged garrison:

On the centre of the "stage" one saw an impressive railway bridge and sundry buildings. The small military garrison protecting this post was suddenly attacked by our old friends (or enemies?), the Wottnott Arabs. The garrison, being outnumbered, W.T.'d for help, which, before you could say "Jack Robinson," appeared in the form of three Vickers troop carriers, escorted by five Sopwith "Snipes."

But something had to be be blown up, and so the troop carriers are used ferry troops who destroy a bridge and thereby save the day.

The troop carriers landed beside the bridge, small parties of machine gunners emerging from their interiors and rushing to the assistance of the garrison. In the meanwhile the "Snipes" hold back the Wottnott Arabs with machine-gun fire, whilst the garrison emplanes in the troop carriers, and a demolition party charges under the bridge for the purpose of its utter destruction. When all was ready, the guard blew his whistle, and the troop carriers sailed away for safety. Then the bridge blew up, which so annoyed the Wottnotts that, after all falling down dead, they got up and made a dash, to the accompaniment of wild yells, for the public enclosures.

What remained of the spectators after the horrible slaughter then witness the final event of the day [the usual smokescreen-laying].

There was a change of scenery in the final for the next year's Pageant, held on Saturday, 30 June 1924. Spectators were invited to make believe that the grass at Hendon represented the sea, upon which were two enormous 'ships', essentially flat stage props cunningly painted to give the illusion of three dimensions (at least from where the spectators were standing):

One was 'an English cargo ship, the "John Henry" of Newcastle, and the other a peaceful-looking, but armed enemy merchant cruiser, the "Slevic".' The scenario here was that the Slevic ordered the John Henry to stop and prepare to be boarded. Luckily, a RAF Supermarine Seagull appeared on the scene and radioed for help. This came in two waves. The first consisted of three Fairey Flycatcher 'ship's fighters', which strafed the Slevic and put its guns out of action.

Then the second wave arrived:

Suddenly, five Blackburn "Dart" torpedo 'planes arrived on the scene, and making for the "Slevic" launched their torpedos. The latter were observed to fall one after the other and travel a short distance towards their object before finally disappearing from view in the grass (sorry! sea!!). Then a few awful moments passed, when, suddenly, with a loud boom a column of smoke and "water" shot high up into the air at the "Slevic's" bows, exposing to view, immediately after, a huge ragged hole in her bows. Almost at the same time the other torpedoes found the mark, one right amidships. There was a terrific explosion, a mass of dense black smoke mixed with flying fragments of "Slevic" following by a column of what appeared to be a mixture of smoke and steam. Gradually this cleared away -- and the "Slevic" had completely disappeared!

Thus concluded what in Flight's opinion 'was, undoubtedly, the best scenic display the Pageant has yet given -- equal to any other we have seen'. British Pathe liked the sinking of the Slevic too, choosing it to open their newsreel coverage.

So successful was it, in fact, that the finale to the next Hendon -- held on Saturday, 27 June 1925, and now renamed the RAF Display -- was very similar. The commerce raider this time was found sheltering in a tropical river rather than sailing on the open sea, so the RAF didn't send in torpedo bombers. Instead, the Seagull and the Flycatchers reprised their 1924 roles, and then:

After a short interval a fleet of heavy bombers, consisting of three Avro "Aldershots," and nine Vickers "Virginias," arrived on the scene from a base conveniently situated close at hand, and with few Oh very direct hits put an end to the cruiser's nasty bad habits.

If there's a theme to these set pieces, it's substitution: i.e. the substitution of airpower for military power and seapower. Anything the Army and Navy can do, the RAF can do better. It can patrol the Empire's reaches more efficiently and more effectively, bringing greater force to bear more quickly than can even tanks and battlecruisers. (Indeed, another Hendon standby at this stage was the bombing and destruction of a tank.) Certainly, as Major F. A. de V. Robertson, noted, 'The public probably never stopped to inquire how nine "Virginias" and three "Aldershots" [based in Britain] arrived off the coast of Africa, or wherever it was'. But that's precisely why the Hendon spectaculars made such powerful propaganda for the RAF.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

As Alan Allport has noted, Winston Churchill's famous speech of 20 August 1940 was and is remembered for a 'single, unrepresentative sentence', i.e.:

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

The speech was given during the Battle of Britain, and 'the Few' are universally taken to be the pilots of Fighter Command, the last line of defence against the Luftwaffe. But, as Alan says, Churchill had relatively little to say about the Battle that day -- he did talk about it, but only as part of a general speech on the war situation. I suggested that if you read the line in context, it actually looks like Churchill is talking about Bomber Command, as he doesn't dwell on Fighter Command at all.

Here's a fuller extract from Churchill's speech (emphasis added):

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day, but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate, careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain.

We are able to verify the results of bombing military targets in Germany, not only by reports which reach us through many sources, but also, of course, by photography. I have no hesitation in saying that this process of bombing the military industries and communications of Germany and the air bases and storage depots from which we are attacked, which process will continue upon an ever-increasing scale until the end of the war, and may in another year attain dimensions hitherto undreamed of, affords one at least of the most certain, if not the shortest of all the roads to victory. Even if the Nazi legions stood triumphant on the Black Sea, or indeed upon the Caspian, even if Hitler was at the gates of India, it would profit him nothing if at the same time the entire economic and scientific apparatus of German war power lay shattered and pulverised at home.

So he gives his famous line, but then says in effect 'yes, yes, the fighter pilots are great, but let's talk about the bomber boys, they're ones who might win the war for us'. As Churchill himself might have said, wars are not won by defence. At most, I think he meant the 'few' to include all Britain's pilots, but the phrase soon narrowed to mean those flying fighters alone. For example, the 1942 film The First of the Few was about the genesis of the Spitfire.

So how were Churchill's words interpreted as he spoke them? The major newspapers all ran leaders on the speech. One which singled out the phrase in question was the Manchester Guardian (21 August 1940, 4):

The work of the R.A.F., both in defence and in offence, has been beyond all expectations and beyond all praise; in a striking sentence he said that "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

So here it is associated with the RAF as a whole, not just one part of it. The Times (21 August 1940, 5) also noted the phrase, in summing up a lengthy paragraph which itself summarises Churchill's comments on Fighter Command, Bomber Command, the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Empire Air Training Scheme:

our airmen can look forward to attaining numerical parity with their opponents, and so to playing that dominant part in the whole war which their skill and gallantry have deserved. Already they have given us a clear vision of victory, even under the impact of what the PRIME MINISTER called a cataract of disaster. Truly, as he said, "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

So here too the fighter pilots are just one element of the Few.

The other newspapers I've looked at don't mention the Few explicitly. The Daily Express (21 August 1940, 5) barely even alludes to the Battle, saying only that 'the fight which this nation and this Empire is making has increased the respect' of Americans for Britain:

Soldiers, sailors, and pilots are at their greatest strength yet. Canada and America are hand in hand. We hold the seven seas.

All this the enemy has to beat.

All this -- and more. For we strike, strike, strike through our bombers. And Churchill promises that we shall strike harder yet.

The Daily Mirror (21 August 1940, 5) listed 'several points of real encouragement from Mr. Churchill's review', the first among them (and the only one relating to airpower) being:

Our bombing of military targets in Germany (one of the brilliant achievements of the R.A.F.) is certainly having its effect. And Mr. Churchill realises that this may be the surest of all roads to victory.

Air defence is presumably one of the other 'brilliant achievements of the R.A.F.', but it doesn't seem to be worth mentioning for the Mirror.

Complicating this picture is the Yorkshire Post (21 August 1940, 2), which in fact didn't mention the work of Bomber Command at all. Instead it focused on the Battle:

we can fairly claim that in these last dramatic weeks we have at least blunted the edge of that air terror on which Germany's hopes of final victory must largely depend [...] Unless Hitler can soon beat us in the air -- and even now it is we who are beating him -- he never will.

The Glasgow Herald (21 August 1940, 6) split the difference, remarking that

Our Air Force has faced the greatest aerial war machine ever known or imagined, has beaten back its first great assaults with great and disproportionate loss to the enemy, and has harried Germany far more effectively than the Luftwaffe has raided here [...]

So, out of this sample of half a dozen metropolitan and provincial dailies, only one, the Yorkshire Post, gave precedence to Fighter Command when discussing Churchill's speech, and even it didn't relate this to his praise of the Few.

Garry Campion analysed Churchill's speech in The Good Fight: Battle of Britain Propaganda and The Few (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He notes differing opinions as to whether the Few were just the fighter pilots or all RAF aircrew, both during the war and after. Richard Overy is on the former side; David Reynolds on the other. Campion himself sides with the usual interpretation (as might be guessed from the title of his book). But I think he is too quick to dismiss the idea that the Few included bomber crews too (78):

On this point it is noteworthy that Bomber Command had yet to strike at Berlin, its first attack occurring five days later on 25/26 August [...] It is hard to see at this early point that Bomber Command's undoubtedly heroic attacks had resulted in clear, tangible outcomes -- also capable of being propagandised -- comparable to that of the fighter squadrons.

But as the above quote from Churchill's speech shows, he did claim that there were 'clear, tangible outcomes' from RAF bomber raids, and he clearly was trying to propagandise them. And, as I have argued, Bomber Command's capabilities and effects were wildly overestimated at this time. Campion's is a Fighter Command view of the Battle of Britain. Perhaps mine is a Bomber Command view.

Image source: Spitfire Site.

This photo appeared on the front page of the Sunday Express on 6 October 1940, a month into the Blitz. A caption explained, or rather asked:

WHO PUT UP THIS POSTER?

This mystery poster has appeared in the streets of London.

It is about six feet high and ten or twelve feet across, and bears nothing to indicate its authorship. No one knows who is paying for it.

In just nine words the poster presents a very simple argument in favour of the reprisal bombing of Germany:

BULLIES ARE ALWAYS COWARDS

BOMB BERLIN AND SAVE LONDON

By bombing Berlin, London would be saved from the Blitz. The German (or perhaps just the Nazi) bullies, being cowards, will not be able to take it as well as the British and so will crack first.

I don't know how many people the poster influenced. But some who might have seen it were already leaning the same way, judging from letter columns in the press. For example, H. H. G. Lewis wrote to the Daily Mirror from Southwark saying that he and his friends 'are of the opinion that we should bomb Germany in "retaliation" for what has been done here".

It appears to be the only way of stopping this Nazi mass-murder which will undoubtedly increase if Sir Archibald Sinclair's present policy of "no retaliation" is adhered to.

The basis of this view was that despite their murderousness the Germans were capable of being deterred. But as Sinclair, the Air Minister, had publicly declared that the RAF would not carry out reprisal bombings for German air raids and his critics charged that this enabled Hitler to bomb London without having any fears for Berlin. The Mirror ran a campaign against Sinclair and encouraged readers to write with their views; to Lewis it replied

Do you think there's a soul left in the country -- barring Sir Archibald -- who wouldn't like to see Berlin in ashes? It should be bombed to blazes and after the war we could have cheap week-end excursion to see it! At least, that's what our readers tell us!

In fact there were plenty of people who agreed with Sinclair, and even on the pro-reprisals side there was a wide diversity of opinion. John Gordon, the editor of the Sunday Express, was a strong supporter of reprisals, but instead of bombing for deterrence he wanted bombing for victory:

Get every bomber we can spare over Germany every hour of every night. Go for the big towns; smash their electricity works and their gas works; smash their railways; block their roads; keep their population awake waiting in terror for your coming.

Make their nights a misery and their days a torment of inconvenience. A few weeks of that will soon make changes in their morale.

This aligns very closely with some pre-war conceptions of the knock-out blow from the air.

But although Gordon called for the RAF to 'start as Hitler started the Battle of Britain[,] by concentrated bombing attacks on his cities', he denied that this meant 'indiscriminate attacks on civilians' but only 'attacks on the amenities of civilian life. And these are military objectives'. That was a common distinction: it was one thing to terrorise civilians, another to intentionally try to kill them. But then other writers invoked the concept of total war to argue that the whole idea of a 'civilian' was now obsolete -- for example this leading article in the Mirror:

In a total war there is no distinction between military and civilian. As the King has just reminded us, civilians are in the forefront of the battle. Their gallantry is to be formally recognised.

There is, further, no distinction between a war upon strong arms and trained men and war upon nerves, strong or weak [...] We therefore strike at German nerve-centres (military, industrial) and also, in so doing, at German nerves.

Even here, there is a denial that civilians in and of themselves could be a valid target: their morale was, certainly, but not their bodies.

This reluctance raises a question which seems obvious in hindsight but was rarely addressed at the time: once German civilians realised that they were not actually in bodily peril then wouldn't the morale effect of precision bombing diminish? The reason for this may have been a recognition that civilian casualties were going to be inevitable, even with the most accurate bombing. So while civilians would not be deliberately killed, they would be 'accidentally' killed and that would be enough for morale purposes. Thus a leading article in the Daily Express in April 1941 argued that Berlin was full of military objectives, but 'if by chance a lot of Germans catch it too there will be no regrets'.

Still others skirted closer to wishing for the deaths of German civilians. Patience Strong, who wrote poems for the Mirror, offered one entitled 'Coventry':

The martyred City, gashed and scarred -- her children slain, her beauty marred -- Still proudly stands, but to the sky -- the very stones for vengeance cry.

As Nations sow, so must they reap -- They, too, for this night's work shall weep -- such deeds their retribution bring -- God speed the Day of Reckoning.

If that's not explicit enough, then take this letter sent to John Gordon and approvingly quoted by him in his column, mocking the 'naice' (in BBC English) but softhearted types who allegedly ran Britain now:

He [the Sunday Times columnist Q] says, "I would take one German town... and I would bomb it... continuously until it was completely wrecked."

Splendid. But to avoid a flood of protests from the naice [sic] readers of the Sunday Times he said just before: "Let us never deliberately bomb German women and children."

He doesn't say how he proposes to do the complete wrecking job without bombing German women and children!

That kind of clarity was quite rare from the pro-reprisals camp. It could be that they were refusing to confront the implications of their proposals, but in at least some cases I think there were genuine beliefs that airpower could compel without killing, as I'll discuss in another post.

Let's look at how the British aviation press is covering the air war, by way of today's issue of Flight, its longest-running periodical (and official organ of the Royal Aero Club). The front cover, along with the first and the last few pages, carry advertisements for various aviation-related products. Here Titanine Ltd is promoting 'the world's premier dope', cleverly incorporating an appropriate and patriotic symbol in the form of an RAF roundel.

I'll come back to some of the ads later, but now let's turn to the editorial pages. The leading article is devoted to the question of reprisals; Flight is firmly against them (264). The reasons given are not moral but practical:

If the R.A.F. were to pass by factories which make munitions of war and divert their energies to killing German civilians, one can picture the sardonic grin of satisfaction which would steal over the face of the Führer. Munitions are valuable to him; the lives of Germans are not.

Moreover, there's no chance as yet that 'the sufferings of the Berliners might drive them to rising against the Nazi Government':

The German armies have conquered much of Europe and are still undefeated. While that is the position, it is preposterous to imagine that the clamour of a city population could force the Government to turn from its course.

And if civilians did protest in any way, the Gestapo would probably just throw the 'loudest-voiced malcontents' into an 'internment camp'.

As you might expect, Flight has extensive coverage of the 'War in the air', as the regular section is called: it runs to four pages this issue. In tone and content, however, it's not too different from the stuff you'd find in one of the dailies: there's just more of it. The focus is mostly on 'the Fighter Command', with the wins and losses for the week summarised in this neat little table on page 268 (which also tells us that this issue was put to bed as long ago as 28 September):

Bomber Command's activities get about half a page and the rest on the Mediterranean theatre and the Sunderland discovery of the last City of Benares survivors. (A RAAF Sunderland of 10 Squadron, incidentally.)

Another regular feature is Norman Macmillan's article on 'air strategy' (272). Macmillan has had an interesting life: he won the Military Cross and the Air Force Cross in the last war, and after it was a test pilot for Fairey and then head of the National League of Airmen. But I wonder if he's in danger of becoming a bit of a bore. This is his twenty-second article on air strategy; no less than twelve of them have been on his pet idea of the 'air blockade' of Germany and Italy, the enforcement of which in his view is the best use of the RAF. Not that the idea is uninteresting in itself, but Macmillan clearly didn't learn much from Rothermere, his journalistic mentor, on how to keep readers interested. But it's fine in small doses. Macmillan argues that there can be no compromise peace -- France's subjugated state shows that this would mean that 'the fate of every man, woman of child of British birth would rest in the hands of Hitler and his conspecific Italo-Germans'. And the air is the only place where Britain has been able to take to the offensive. This is despite the fact that, due to the government's lack of foresight, the RAF entered the war 'with insufficient aircraft'. Even now,

It seems that some of our present leaders hold the view that aircraft are still only the means to an end, that end being the ultimate victory of sea and land forces over the sea and land forces of the enemy. That view is out of date.

This is unfortunate, because:

The Royal Air Force has had to be taken from its function of maintaining the air blockade of Germany and Italy to conduct a war against the sea and land forces of Germany which have been concentrated along the western seaboard of the continent of Europe [...] Night after night and frequently by day the bombers of the R.A.F. have been directed against objectives which are directly naval and military in character.

And what does Macmillan mean by 'air blockade'? Like a naval blockade, it's aimed at a long-term strangulation of the enemy economy. To this end he wants the RAF to make sure to bomb industrial targets in remote eastern Germany (what he calls Zone 4), such as:

Armaments at Freital and Pirna; metal industries at Gleiwitz, Lauchhammer, Ulm, Laband, Paruschowitz, Munich, Chemnitz and elsewhere; at Dresden the following articles are made: typewriters, chemicals, sirens for air raid and fire alarms, rollers, hoppers, compressors, ladders, buildings, watches, nautical, survey and aircraft instruments, telephones and cables, high-pressure nozzle apparatus for fire-fighting. At Breslau rolling stock and road coaches, non-ferrous metals, chemicals, charcoal, machining, bridge-building, bandages and drugs, telephones and cables, saddlery and linen. These are only an indication of the industry which exists in Zone 4. It contains a great cloth-producing belt. Motor vehicles, aeroplane engines, air-frames, optical instruments are made in Zone 4. In fact, it contains all the elements needed to provide a safety zone for German industry until the R.A.F. really go for it.

So rather than a lazy recourse to morale bombing, or a bloody dependence on a ground invasion, prolonged, precision bombing of German industry is the way to victory.

There's one thing an aviation magazine must have, and that's aircraft. Today's issue has a couple of aircraft features. The first is a report on the 'Leviathan bomber' now nearing completion in California, the Douglas B-19. 'Democracy's sword and armour' has a wingspan of 210 feet, a gross loaded weight of 140,000 lbs, and a rather incredible bombload of 18 tons. No range is given 'but wild statements such as from Los Angeles to Europe and back are not lacking'. On the following page, the suggestion is made that

The whole thing seems to be a gigantic experiment in evolving an ocean-crossing bomber, a type which U.S.A. must have unless her defence is going to be based entirely on making contact with an enemy who has arrived at the national boundary or comparatively close to it.

Then there's a very technical article on a 'Modern German bomber', the Ju 88. While it has 'some features strange to British eyes' and is described as clumsy-looking, on the whole the analysis seems fairly objective.

Finally, a couple of ads. The first one seems somewhat redundant -- surely that this company is hiring is well known by now!

The advertising manager for Magnesium Elektron Limited is either a genius or a miser, as they've employed an artist whose been dead for four centuries and doesn't need to be paid.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are abroad again. Death, War, Inflation and Pestilence sweep across Europe. Yet the Nation's work still goes on, and "Elektron" magnesium alloys -- a vital element in the national creative effort -- continue to be produced in ever increasing quantities.

And yes, it really does name Inflation as one of the Horsemen!