Periodicals

The first and last commercial bombers

By in 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Archives, Books, Civil aviation, Periodicals 4 Comments

In my article about the commercial bomber concept, I began my discussion of the idea that airliners could be turned into bombers in 1918, with the report of the Civil Aerial Transport Committee. But it turns out that it appeared some years earlier, though in a far more fragmentary and undeveloped form than in the interwar period. And it involved airships, not aeroplanes.

In December 1912, the Admiralty received a joint report from the military and naval attachés in Berlin about the wartime disposition and employment of Germany's airship fleet. They suggested that the German government was paying subsidies to airship manufacturers so that their civilian production would be built to the minimum standard required for military service. So, in the next war,

the naval and military authorities will thus have at their disposal not only the Government aircraft, but also a number of dirigible airships belonging to private firms fully manned and equipped and ready for instant service[.]

The attachés estimated that this would yield a German fleet of between 21 and 23 airships, though as it's unclear how many of these were civilian it's equally unclear how much of a difference their inclusion would make. But generally speaking, they increased the aerial threat to Britain:

A number of vessels in this formidable array of airships would be capable of sailing from Germany to Sheerness, Woolwich, or any other desired point in England and return without the necessity of an intermediate descent to the earth.

The commercial bomber idea also appeared in the press. 'C. C. T.' (i.e. C. C. Turner) , writing in the Observer at the end of March 1913, also attempted to estimate the size of the German air fleet in the event of war. He came up with 13 government-owned airships, and

In addition, there are in Germany privately-owned airships:–

First-class… 2
Second-class… 8

So his total came to 23 airships, which corresponds well with the (presumably confidential) estimate provided by the attachés. This could be because they were working from the same information, or perhaps Turner got his figures from the Admiralty. The basic rhetorical function of the commercial bomber is much the same here as it was later, to inflate the size of the enemy air fleet and make it seem more threatening, the better to demonstrate 'the fatal complacency and ignorance permitted, and even fostered, in this country'. However, in the 1920s and 1930s, the commercial bomber idea was useful only so long as Germany had no air force, and more or less disappeared with the creation of the Luftwaffe (or so I argue). Here, it is being claimed that it is Britain which effectively has no aerial force to speak of, since it is credited with only 2 airships '(on order)'. So piling on even more German airships hardly seems necessary. Perhaps the point is to increase the German lead over France, which has 10 airships attributed to it '(these are less powerful than Germany's').

If Turner got his information from the Admiralty, he might also have taken the idea that civilian airships could be used for military purposes from the same source. But perhaps it was obvious enough: military airships and civilian airships were in fact more or less identical at this time. Schwaben, a DELAG airliner which first flew in June 1911, was built to the same plan as two military Zeppelins, Ersatz ZII and ZIII. Two other DELAG Zeppelins, Viktoria Luise and Hansa, were indeed pressed into military service in August 1914 after a rudimentary refit. Though they were mainly used for training, it seems that Hansa, at least, flew combat missions over France and the Baltic. And Sachsen, the last DELAG Zeppelin to be built before the war, raided Antwerp on the night of 25 September 1914. So as well as being the first commercial bombers in theory, airships might have been the first, and even the only, commercial bombers in practice.

Rhyme nor reason

By in 1900s, 1910s, Australia, Books, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics No Comments

After outlining the Anglo-German naval rivalry and the tariff reform debate, Alfred Gollin, one of the few historians to discuss the subject in any depth, has this to say about the origins of the 1909 phantom airship scare:

This was the intense condition of Britain affairs when the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, made his announcement about the government's new aeronautical policy in the House of Commons on 5 May 1909. His speech produced a curious and remarkable result.

People in several parts of England now began to see airships in flight, in places where it was impossible for such aerial vehicles to be.

It's true that it was right about this time that phantom airship sightings took off. However, some of these took place before 5 May, some as far back as March. Moreover, the contents of Asquith's speech (which was quite short and hardly deserves the name) were not exactly sensational and seem unlikely to have caused much apprehension. He had two main points to make. The first was that 'The Government is taking steps towards placing its organisation for aerial navigation on a more satisfactory footing':

As the result of a Report made by the Committee of Imperial Defence, the work of devising and constructing dirigible airships and aeroplanes has been apportioned between the Navy and the Army. The Admiralty is building certain dirigibles, while certain others of a different type will be constructed at the War Office Balloon Factory at Aldershot, which is about to be reorganised for the purpose. The investigation and provision of aeroplanes are also assigned to the War Office.

The second was to announce the formation of a 'Special Committee' under the presidency of Lord Rayleigh and the chairmanship of H. T. Glazebrook to oversee 'investigations at the National Physical Laboratory and for general advice on the scientific problems arising in connection with the work of the Admiralty and War Office in aerial construction and navigation'.

It could be that it was the way Asquith's announcement was reported that was the trigger. But while the major newspapers did report it, again there doesn't seem like there was much to excite the general public. Most press reactions that I've looked at treated it as a welcome, if overdue, development, and expressed hopes that Britain would now be able to catch up to Continental standards in aviation — not only those like the Manchester Guardian which were in political sympathy with the government, but also those which were not, like the Standard, the Globe, and even the Manchester Courier, which by 1913 had definitely decided that the aerial defence of the nation could not be entrusted to the Liberals. It's true that The Times and the Observer did criticise the makeup of the Rayleigh committee (mainly on the grounds that there were very few members with practical aviation experience), but even so there was no suggestion of immediate peril.

So I'm sceptical. But I'm also sympathetic. It's natural to seek some definite cause of these puzzling events — I do it myself: I think successfully in the Australian case in 1918, with the report of the Wölfchen's flight over Sydney; less so in my 4th year thesis, when I suggested that the outbreak of the First Balkan War was somehow responsible for the Sheerness incident. Why did start people see mystery airships in March 1909? Why did a lot more start seeing them in May? Why did they stop seeing them by the end of the month? The last is actually relatively easy to explain: the scare collapsed under its own weight, as too many airships were being reported to be credible and the press became sceptical. By the same token, the press was certainly crucial in the expansion phase, by reporting on the growing phenomenon and suggesting to people that there really were airships flying around at night. So it's finding the initial spark that is the real problem, and generally there isn't a satisfactory one to be had. I think it's essentially random. People see strange things in the sky from time to time. Sometimes they think they're airships, because what else could they be? Usually they are ignored, even if they tell somebody. Sometimes, though, the reports are picked up and amplified by the press, which is when the scare proper begins. There's no single ultimate cause; it's more the vibe, the popular understanding of aviation. To an extent this process is irrational, then; which makes me think that maybe Asquith's announcement could have been one of the triggers after all.

The first death of Roland Garros

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Rumours 5 Comments

Roland Garros is today mainly known for having given his name to the home of French tennis. But long before then he was famous as a pioneer aviator in both peace and war. In December 1912, for example, he set a new altitude record of 17,000 feet, while in September 1913 he made the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean, from France to Tunisia. On the outbreak of war the following year, he joined the French Army as a pilot flying Morane Parasols and flew his first combat mission in mid-August. After some unsatisfactory initial experiments with a rifle-armed observer, Garros sought a way of firing a machine gun in the direction of flight. By April 1915 he had a Parasol equipped with the first deflector gear, which consisted of an armoured propellor with deflecting plates, the idea being that any bullets which hit the propellor would bounce off and the rest would pour into the enemy aircraft. As insane as this seems, it worked, enough: Garros shot down three German aeroplanes in a few weeks, before being forced down behind enemy lines himself and captured. His war wasn't over, however. He escaped from a POW camp in Magdeburg in February 1918, made his way back to France and then back into the air, and claimed a fourth German victim before being killed in action in October, just over a month before the Armistice.

Despite never meeting the formal definition of five combat kills (which anyway wasn't settled until after his capture), the ovations awarded him by an adoring press had effectively made Garros the first air ace. He wasn't the first French airman to shoot down an enemy aircraft, but something about the solitary nature of his victories captured the public imagination, and set the template for the more successful aces of all nationalities who followed him. So it's interesting to discover that this narrative was prefigured by a rumour about Garros published in the British press at the very beginning of the war, which had him ramming and destroying a Zeppelin at the cost of his own life.
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Everybody's doing it

By in 1910s, Music, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Plots and tables, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships, Tools and methods No Comments

Press interest in airships, January-April 1913

'Everybody's Doing It' was the name of a popular revue which opened in the West End in February 1912; the music and lyrics (including a near-eponymous song) were co-written by Irving Berlin. It was also the Manchester Guardian stab at a contemporary pop cultural reference to describe just how widespread the phantom airship scare had become by the start of March 1913. There are more concrete ways to express this than ragtime. Geography is one; chronology is another.

The graph above shows two things. (After relying on Plot for many years, I've switched to DataGraph, which is not free but is more powerful and much easier to use.) The blue bars represent the number of British periodicals (mostly daily newspapers, London and provincial) which mentioned mystery airships on each day in January-April 1913, while the red bars represent the number which mentioned airships, whether mysterious or non-mysterious (for example, the activities of German or British military dirigibles). It doesn't matter whether a newspaper mentioned scareships once as a humorous aside or devoted half a page to a topic, both are counted equally here. Three phases can immediately be distinguished. (I must admit to having fudged the data a little bit: I've assumed that every issue of the Aeroplane would have mentioned airships, as I don't have access to copies to check. Flight certainly did.) The first, from the start of January through the third week of February, is characterised by a relatively low level of press interest in airships, in which references to mystery airships predominate (though not so much towards the end of this period). The second phase is clearly the peak of the phantom airship scare, the last week of February and the first week of March, when more than two or three times the usual number of periodicals talked about airships, overwhelmingly the mysterious kind. The third phase extends from the second week of March until the end of April. There are far fewer mentions of scareships here, even compared to the first phase. But interestingly, the amount of attention paid to airships in general remains very high: several times that of the first period, and not too far short of that in the second, peak period.
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This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Enemy inside the gates

By in Blogging and tweeting, Books, Periodicals 12 Comments

[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.]

Despite appearing in the Times Literary Supplement a month ago, Eric Naiman's astounding exposure of independent historian A. D. Harvey's fraudulent scholarship seems to have been little remarked upon by historians. (Naiman's piece is quite long, but worth the read; for a much shorter version try here.) Admittedly, the true extent of Harvey's transgressions, which includes fabricating primary sources and reviewing his own work under pseudonyms, is unclear; but as Naiman argues, from what we do know they are not the sort of thing the academy can let slide:

It is not only that the apparent practice of submitting articles under fictitious names to scholarly journals might well have a chilling effect on the ability of really existing independent scholars to place their work. Nor is it just the embarrassment caused to editors who might in an ideal world have taken more pains to check the contributions of Stephanie Harvey or Trevor McGovern, but who accepted them in good faith, partly out of a wish to make their publications as inclusive as possible. The worst thing here, if they are fictitious, is a violation of the trust that remains a constitutive element of the humanities. There is, it seems to me, a fundamental difference between posting partisan, anonymous reviews on Amazon, where there is no assumption of proper evaluative standards or impartiality, and placing similar reviews or hoaxing articles in academic journals, which are still the most hallowed sites for the development and transmission of humanistic ideas. The former is a cheap act of virtual graffiti; the latter may be the closest a secular scholar can come to desecration.

Some prominent academic blogs in cognate disciplines have discussed the affair, namely Crooked Timber, Languagehat, and Lawyers, Guns and Money, but with some exceptions the predominant reaction in the these posts and comments seems to be wry amusement, rather than concern, say, or disgust. Harvey himself (apparently) twice commented himself at Languagehat (without quite defending or explaining his actions), but strangely was all but ignored by the other commenters.

Perhaps I feel more strongly about it than most. Harvey is an independent historian and has been for much of his career, apart from some periods inside the academy. I'm also currently an independent historian, and worry that this sort of misbehaviour will make it harder for people in my position to contribute to academic scholarship from outside the academy proper. That's unfounded, perhaps; I've encountered no undue difficulties so far and Harvey's case is probably odd enough to be sui generis. Also, I own one of Harvey's books (Body Politic: Political Metaphor and Political Violence) and, I notice, praised him on Twitter. Certainly I was impressed by the range of his research in period, topic and discipline, from sex in Georgian England to literary criticism. So I feel foolish for having been taken in by him. Finally, and most importantly, a significant proportion of Harvey's prolific output comprises military history, and even airpower history (though ironically this is the part of his work I'm least familiar with): Arnhem, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars, 1793-1945, A Muse of Fire: Literature, Art and War, English Literature and the Great War with France, 'The French Armée de l'Air in May-June 1940: a failure of conception', 'The Spanish Civil War as seen by British officers', 'Army Air Force and Navy Air Force: Japanese aviation and the opening phase of the war in the Far East', 'The Royal Air Force and close support, 1918-1940', 'The bomber offensive that never took off: Italy's Regia Aeronautica in 1940' and so on. To be fair, as far as I know there is no evidence that any of these works is fraudulent in any way. But how can historians extend Harvey the benefit of the doubt now? If we should be patrolling the borders of our discipline against incursions by pseudohistorians, then we should also sound the alarm when there's an enemy inside the gates.

Bomben auf Amerika?

By in 1910s, Art, Books, Ephemera, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures 3 Comments

That Liberty Shall Not Perish From The Earth, 1918

John Ptak recently pinned a 1964 science fiction magazine cover depicting a ruined Statue of Liberty, predating the more famous ending of Planet of the Apes by four years. He wondered about earlier images along the same lines, and after a bit of digging I found not many at all. The above is the only example, but it turns out to be relevant to my interests. It's an American propaganda poster dating to 1918, appealing to the viewer to invest in the latest war bond issue. Lady Liberty is ruined all right — her head and her torch have tumbled down beside her. Behind her New York City is burning, and the flames and their reflection in the harbour dominate the image. The cause of the destruction is presumably the aeroplanes which can be seen on either side of the Statue. A submarine is also sailing past, which may be responsible for the merchant vessels wrecked on Liberty Island.
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Post-blogging the 1913 scareships: conclusion

By in 1910s, Blogging and tweeting, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships 2 Comments

Yesterday's post was, thankfully, the last entry in my post-blogging of the 1913 phantom airship wave. I've searched the available (to me) primary sources up until the end of April 1913 and can find no further references; and Watson, Oldroyd and Clarke's exhaustive compilation of phantom airship sightings has only 7 entries from May onwards. In fact in terms of people seeing scareships it really was over by mid-March, but I'm also interested in people talking about scareships, which lingered a little longer. It's definitely time to draw a line under the exercise, and to start analysing what I've found in preparation for my AAEH paper. There'll be more posts along those lines in future, but here I'll comment briefly on the post-blogging as post-blogging.

By some measures this was the most extensive attempt at post-blogging I've yet carried out: 69 posts over nearly four months. That's nearly twice as long as the Sudeten crisis series, and nearly four times as long as the 1909 scareship wave posts. Still, there wasn't a post every day and the scareships only briefly dominated the news, for about a week at the end of February 1913, so researching and writing the posts wasn't as gruelling a task as for the Sudeten crisis or the Blitz. The latter series in particular was quite tough to write as there was so much on-topic material that I had to be very selective. Also, I wanted to give space to non-Blitz news when the press gave it priority. I decided not to do that this time for a couple of reasons. One was, obviously, to save time. The other was that I wanted to focus squarely on the phantom airships themselves; with very few exceptions I only quoted from newspaper articles which mentioned them in some way (even if only in passing), and talking about other things would have obscured the scareship signal. I'm not sure that this was a wise choice, as this means that so much of the context is missing. For example, there was a lot of discussion of airships and the menace they posed in this period that didn't refer to mystery airships at all: the phantom airship scare was only one part of a greater airship scare. Hopefully a sense of this came through. Of course I noted all these other airship references for my own purposes and will use them for writing my paper. There's also the wider European military and diplomatic situation, particularly the fighting in the Balkans and things like France's move to a three-year conscription period and increases in German military spending. This is all obviously relevant background, and again some of it snuck into the posts. But apart from the expansion and activities of Germany's Zeppelin fleet, few explicit links were made in discussions of scareships. Likewise for all the other preoccupations of the press at the time, though intriguingly suffragettes seem to get jokingly mentioned alongside scareships reasonably often, which perhaps suggests they both had this combined aspect of menace and mirth. But that's getting perilously close to analysis, so I'll end this here.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Tuesday, 22 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships No Comments

Aberdeen Daily Journal, 22 April 1913, 4

A rather belated mystery airship report appears in today's Aberdeen Daily Journal (p. 4):

It was reported a few days ago that on the evening of the 9th April [1913] an airship, steering north-west, was seen from the island of Stronsay, Orkney. Doubt was felt at the time as to the reliability of the report, but information has since been received from other parts of Orkney of an airship having been seen about the same time and proceeding in the same direction.

It may be significant that the Orkneys are the location of Scapa Flow, an important naval base used for fleet exercises. An airship was seen from the neighbouring island of Sanday in late February.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Saturday, 19 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships No Comments

The Economist follows up last week's third leading article about the airship scare with the fourth leading article today (an extract from which also appears in the Manchester Guardian). This time around the subject is 'THE "DAILY MAIL'S" MANSION HOUSE MEETING FOR AIRSHIPS' (925), which is planned for 5 May and will feature speeches by 'Mr. A. J. Balfour, Lord Roberts, Lord Rosebery, Lord Brassey, and "other leaders of our public life."' It quotes at length the Daily Mail's own announcement from 12 April:

The Lord Mayor (Sir David Burnett) will be supported at the meeting by a representative gathering of eminent sailors, soldiers, statesmen, and leaders of commerce. All shades of politics will be represented.

Resolutions will be put urging that Supplementary Estimates should be prepared to provide for at least a two-to-one superiority over the airships and aeroplanes of the next strongest naval Power. That Power has at present 28 first-class airships, of which we have none, and a marked superiority in aeroplanes.

The announcement of the meeting has drawn a chorus of approval from many parts of the country. Among the many letters received at the offices of the Navy League in Victoria street yesterday was one from Lord Selborne, who wrote:– 'The urgency and importance of aerial defence cannot easily be exaggerated.'

According to the Economist, 'the Daily Mail's campaign, if successful, will add enormously to the burden of the taxpayers (to say nothing of the loss of human life*), and, incidentally, in all probability, will promote a flotation of companies for the manufacture of airships and aeroplanes'.

Now the Stock Exchange is beginning to talk of an airship boom, whose sole basis will be the prospect of diverting huge sums of money from the pockets of the public into those of existing or prospective airship concerns. We cannot help thinking that the sensational Press has been going to work in a very improper way. National defence, national credit, and national taxation are serious matters. And yet, just before the Army and Navy Estimates were produced, lying reports were circulated in all parts of the country that German airships were hovering over the East Coast. It is very difficult even for the most simpleminded and credulous citizen to believe that these reports were manufactured and circulated with purely patriotic motives. It is already known that airship plants are being laid down by well-known constructors with the Admiralty and War Office for the purpose of securing Admiralty and War Office contracts.

While allowing that 'those interested in company promotions and in the movements of armour-plate shares' may believe themselves to be motivated 'solely by patriotic anxieties', and that 'The Press, indeed, may be pure', the Economist hopes that

the Lord Mayor will not preside at the meeting of May 5th for the purpose of forcing a Daily Mail airship programme upon the Government, unless he is convinced (1) that the national expenditure and taxation will admit of supplementary estimates; (2) that Consols are not sufficiently low and the Sinking Fund not sufficiently small; (3) that a Government which has added in four or five years at least 12 millions sterling to the annual cost of the navy, and has raised the income-tax to 1s 7d in the £ on high incomes, requires further stimulus from the City, and (4) that a ratio which has never been applied to the Navy should be applied to airships.

The City may want the Government to spend more on defence, but does the City want to pay more in taxes?

If it does the Daily Mail has pointed the way. If it does not, then let us pause before we join in promoting the wholesale manufacture of new and costly toys whose value in war is highly problematical, whose commercial utility is certainly nil, and of which we already have a supply large enough to provide a weekly list of deaths, injuries, and other excitements for the Yellow Press.

Some experimentation 'is no doubt necessary [...] But to fritter away public money on practically useless types is merely a waste of national resources'. And, according to 'an English expert, just returned from Berlin [...] of the 16 Zeppelin airships which have been constructed in Germany six only remain, the other ten having perished miserably'.

* A military balloon accident near Paris on Thursday left two officers dead and a third critically wounded: 'Would airship promoters be so zealous if compulsory service in airships were applied to them?'

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Thursday, 17 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships No Comments

The Manchester Guardian reports today on Germany's naval aviation plans, as revealed in an official memorandum recently released to the public, which it judges to be 'important as marking the first step from tentative experiments to a period of ordered growth' (9). An 'explanatory statement' is likened to 'the famous Introduction to the Navy Bill of 1900':

Experience, we are told, has taught the Admiralty that the new weapon is of great value 'in strategic and tactical reconnoitring,' and that 'under certain circumstances it may be used with advantage as a weapon of attack.' In consequence, the Admiralty has decided to take up aviation more seriously than was at first intended, 'lest it should be left behind in the race with other nations.'

The memorandum itself proposes that Germany

construct, within the five years 1914-1918, a fleet of airships and aeroplanes to be used solely for naval purposes, acting quite independently of the military aviation department. The airship section is to be made up of two squadrons, each containing five ships. One ship from each squadron will serve as 'material reserve' — that is to say, will remain laid up in its shed; — the other eight will be kept on active service. The same station is to serve as headquarters for both squadrons, and is to be fitted up with four double revolving halls, together with two stationary halls for the 'material reserve.'

What sort of airships will be built is not specified:

At present the naval authorities possess one airship, the Zeppelin L 1, notorious in England through the scare raised last October, when it was asserted that the vessel had been sighted over Sheerness during the night in which its long-distance trials were made. A sister ship to the L 1 is nearing completion, but, as far as is known to the public, no further naval Zeppelins are under order at the moment. It may be taken for granted that the main body of the future fleet will be made up of vessels of this type [...]

The Guardian's correspondent is puzzled as to why the Admiralty has decided to put all of its airship hangars in the one place (where is not stated in the memorandum, but 'it is accepted as a matter of course that this will be Cuxhaven'). The Army is planning to build a network of hangars across Germany, which will minimise the chance of one its airships having to moor in the open and being wrecked by wind. In an emergency, naval airships will have to take that risk or hope that they are within range of home or Königsberg, the only nearby military hangar.

As for aeroplanes, 'the scheme outlined in the "memorandum" seems less ambitious, especially when compared with the plans of our own Admiralty'.

It is proposed, during the same period of five years, to bring together a squadron of 50 machines. Fourteen are to serve as 'material reserve'; the remaining 36, divided into six groups of six each, will be kept on active service. [...] As in the case of the airship section, one station is to serve as headquarters for all six groups. There are, it is true, to be six branch stations, each with accomodation for ten machines, but these are to be occupied only during occasional manœuvres and in time of war.

Again, the type of aeroplane is not specified, though in previous experiments 'The machine aimed at has been of the type that can rise both from land and water'. But at present 'Germany is far behind our own naval authorities in this branch of aviation'. The aeroplane squadron is likely to be based 'at Kiel or Wilhemshaven, each of which is within easy reach both of the North Sea and the Baltic'.

Finally, the Guardian's correspondent considers 'the possibility — even if remote — of the naval air-fleet being reinforced by military vessels'. The Germany Army is less forthcoming on the subject of future aviation plans, but anyway by their nature military aeroplanes will not be particularly well suited to naval service, so that leaves the military airships. It is known is fifteen airship companies are planned in total, each with a rotating hangar capable of holding two airships. If the Army fills these to capacity as the Navy is to do, then that makes thirty military airships by the end of 1915:

We must, then, to the proposed ten vessels for the navy, add a possible reserve of thirty more military vessels, a formidable enough fleet if once the value of the airship in naval warfare is admitted.

An unusually alarmist conclusion for the Guardian, it must be said.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

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