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".

The French writer, Pierre-Antoine Courouble devoted himself to a structural inquiry to unearth the facts behind this vague legend. His investigations resulted in 137 testimonies from resistants, former employees on German basis, and pilots of the Luftwaffe. His research has been condensed in the book The Riddle of the Wooden Bombs, published at the "Presses du midi" and translated in four languages. He found original sources on this matter in the form of testimonies of servicemen, pilots and veterans' children. He met a dozen witnesses who had personally seen the famous bombs, two of whom were eye witnesses to their droppings. Today, these wooden bombs can be found on the internet. We bought them.

Peter Haas, the German translator of the book, found a pilot from the Luftwaffe named Wern Thiel, who happened to be stationed in 1943, on the fake airfield nearby Potsdam in Germany. He is the living witness of the dropping of a dozen of wooden bombs, with the mention Wood for Wood! At the end of the filmed interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_tGOxoIhIE) he addresses the allied pilot who had that typically peculiar sense of humour.

Today we are confronted with a difficulty named TIME! The men who survived (they must be aged between 75 and 95) are very hard to find via internet (we tried!). As the official (mostly British) authorities still deny the existence of the droppings (war is not a game, it's an urban legend, etc.) we eventually decided to explore another possibility.

As we notice that most of the testimonies are American, a basic idea started growing. Couldn’t this typically peculiar sense of British humour not simply be an example of AMERICAN sense of humour? This would explain lots of things and is the reason why we try to contact pilots or members of the American Forces stationed in Europe during WW2 who could have been involved in the dropping of these wooden bombs.

In the meantime we are working on the French-American project to produce a documentary film about the subject. Olivier Hermitant, from « Route07 production », (http://vimeo.com/11526361) is offering his services in order to find the rare bird, a veteran of WW2 who was witness or perhaps actor of the dropping of these wooden bombs on German targets.

Could you help us in our quest finding the rare (American) bird? We would be extremely grateful if you could inform your members about this riddle of the Second World War.

I hope Dewaerheid, Haas and Courourble do succeed in finding new eyewitnesses. I did argue in my review of Courouble's book that the focus should move to searching for documentary evidence in operational records and other archives, but I suppose they aren't going anywhere whereas the veterans are. (But I'd note that it's not the job of 'the official (mostly British) authorities' to confirm or deny the wooden bomb stories, somebody has to go into the archives themselves and do the actual research.)

I'm dubious, though, about this new theory that American airmen were the ones who dropped the wooden bombs. In part this seems to be thanks to the new witness mentioned above, Wern Thiel, a Luftwaffe pilot stationed on a decoy airfield near Potsdam during the war. He does specifically say he'd like to meet the American pilot who dropped wooden bombs on his dummy aeroplanes. But in the brief excerpt shown, he says that when the air raid in question took place (in October 1942 according to the video caption, though it's 1943 above and I can't actually hear him saying the year) that they 'activated the light beacons' which implies it was a night raid. Aside from the question of identifying the nationality of aircraft at night, the Americans of course very rarely carried out night bombing.

It would also need to be explained why the majority of the stories claim it was the British -- even when told by Americans? It could perhaps be claimed that this is a later accretion to the story, but then that puts us back into urban legend territory. Perhaps that's not a problem, as the wooden bomb story clearly is an urban legend as well as (probably) a true story; maybe cross-fertilisation took place.

And then there's the fact that the wooden bomb stories predate American involvement in the war. William Shirer recorded one version in his diary in November 1940; and there are other examples too. Obviously these can't be attributed to Americans.

It does seem odd that it's so hard to find accounts from Allied airmen who dropped wooden bombs, as opposed to accounts of Allied airmen who dropped wooden bombs. This, along with the wide variation in details from story to story, suggests to me that most of the wooden bombs were urban legends, rumours or just jokes. But given the evidence Courouble and his colleagues have come up with, I think wooden bombs were really dropped, sometimes, rarely. Whether reality inspired rumours or rumours inspired reality may not be possible to determine now.

I've recently begun some research at the National Archives of Australia (the Melbourne reading room of which is conveniently only about half a kilometre from my house) into the 1918 mystery aeroplane scare. It's always exciting to get to work on a new set of primary sources; and this is my first time working in a state archive so it's doubly interesting. I can already see that there's a lot of useful material, and my original idea of a short, simple case study is already starting to seem optimistic.

The main file I've looked at so far is NAA: MP367/1, 512/3/1319, 'Reports from 2nd M D during War Period on lights, aeroplanes, signals etc.', a big fat dossier of reports from the public and the results of military and police investigations into them. 2nd Military District seems to have covered New South Wales, so it's actually not what I ultimately want: most of the 1918 sightings took place in Victoria, i.e. 3rd Military District. But as NSW was the other big state (somewhat more people, more important industrially and commercially; but Victoria had the seat of government and defence headquarters) it'll be useful as a control.

There are three main types of reports: signalling, wireless, and aeroplanes. The first is easily the largest, and consists of people seeing lights flashed from houses, from a hill top, on the coast, etc, and reporting them as suspected lights from German agents. For example, in May 1918 Mrs Clara A. Woollard of Pambula wrote that

I think it is my duty to inform you that flashlight signals were being displayed in the sky, to the west, at about eight o'clock last night.

She had seen this light on several previous occasions, and thought that it was 'as if someone were telegraphing messages by that means'. Virtually all of these reports seem to have turned out to be false alarms, often caused by people carrying hurricane lamps late at night so they could see where they were going. Most of the suspect houses turned out to be inhabited by good, solid 'Britishers'.

Nationality and ethnicity was also important in the wireless cases. These were suspected wireless installations, with a big antenna and associated plant, potentially capable of sending and receiving messages to and from -- where? Other secret agents? Ships off the coast? The Fatherland? As with the signals, it's not always clear just what the suspicion was, only that they were suspicious. But who needs something like that, anyway? Conveniently, unauthorised possession of such wireless installations was already prohibited under pre-war legislation, as was pointed out in press notices in September 1914. This led to a rash of reports from the public, which continued at a fairly steady rate until the end of the war. As late as September 1918, for example, the Provost Marshal Office of 2nd Military District investigated the concerns of Mrs Caroline H. Scott of Darlinghurst, who

is of the opinion that there is a Wireless Plant in the vicinity of her residence as she has noticed flashes & also heard the tick tacking [sic] similar to those produced by a Wireless Plant. These noises & flashes occurred about between 3 & 4.o.clock in the mornings & she considered it her duty to inform the Authorities of same.

Often there was a suspicious foreigner involved. Sometimes the wireless installations were real enough (one man was using his to carry out research into the effect of radio waves on plant growth!) but none seem to have been to have been used in espionage or subversion.

And then there were the aeroplanes. This is the smallest category in 2nd Military District's files, nineteen cases for the whole war: seven in 1914, when you might expect some war jitters, and another seven in 1918, mostly after the Hindenburg offensive on the Western Front and the reports of raiders off the coast. A very few were actual aeroplanes, generally sitting in somebody's workshop somewhere. At Hay in November 1914, V. B. Sylvander's activities were investigated by a police detective. Sylvander and his son had already built one aeroplane, which had been damaged in testing; a second one was being built but lacked an engine. Sylvander wisely proposed to give this to the government when it was finished, which perhaps influenced the detective's judgement that he was 'a loyal Britisher' despite being a 'naturalised Russian Finn'. Most others were the more usual lights in the night sky, as seen over Britain, New Zealand and Australia in 1909 and elsewhere/when.

Some were more substantial and unusual: in June 1918, Miss McCann of Beckom was sitting in her room at 1am when she 'heard the buzzing noise of an aeroplane and a ray of light shot across her bed like a searchlight and seem to be going south'. She said that it didn't sound like a motor car (though later she admitted that it might have been just that). In this case, it wasn't just the sound and the light: McCann seems to have suspected a local family of disloyalty. She mentioned to the policeman interviewing her that a 'strange man' had visited the Groth farm nearby, and it turned out that they had recently had a large box of ammunition delivered to them. Three of the family's sons, of age and medically fit, had claimed conscientious objection to military service on religious grounds. The Groth brothers were born in Australia, but their parents were from Germany, and this combined with their 'disloyal' attitude denied them the status of 'Britishers'. A number of followup investigations led to the reluctant conclusion that the Groths weren't up to any mischief (the ammunition was for hunting and pest control), but one suspects the damage to their reputation was done.

One mystery aeroplane stands out because it was actually a phantom airship: a Zeppelin seen at Young in July 1918 by W. G. Rogers, a professional photographer. In a letter to the Minister for Defence, Senator George Pearce, Rogers said that

I saw what appeared to me be [sic] an airship of the Zeppelin type due west from this town in size it appeared to be about 40ft. long but no doubt it was much larger as it was some miles distant. It was steering zig-zag course as though it was having trouble with the heavy wind which was blowing that morning.

It sunk out of sight to the west at around 8am. Just what a Zeppelin would be doing at Young, more than 250 km inland from Sydney, is not clear. Rogers's account was taken seriously, but a police sergeant detailed to investigate reported that nobody else had seen the Zeppelin. Furthermore,

Mr Roger's [sic] is a very respectable resident of Young, but very near sighted and I am of the opinion that he saw a snow cloud, and believed it to be an airship.

About the time mentioned by Mr Roger's [sic] there was a strong wind blowing with rain and snow.

My favourite find, though, is the one that made me laugh inappropriately at the archive. The Captain-in-Charge of His Majesty's Australian Naval Establishments, Sydney, wrote in December 1917 to 2nd Military District's Military Intelligence Officer about a purported illegal wireless installation at St Ignatius College:

I would point out the peculiar merits of this supposed apparatus,

1. Peculiar flashes.
2. Finding imaginary earthquakes.

I would suggest it might also be applied for finding the supposed brains of the Prime Minister's correspondent.

As the writer was John Glossop, formerly commander of HMAS Sydney and victor over the raider SMS Emden in 1914, he probably had good reason to feel his time was being wasted. But scepticism didn't stop the reports of strange signals, illegal aerials, and mystery aeroplanes. Only the end of the war did that.

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

Folk physics (or naive physics -- there's also folk biology, folk psychology, and so on) is the term used in philosophy and psychology to describe the way we all intuitively understand the physical world to work. It's very often at odds with scientific physics (unsurprisingly or else there'd be no need for the latter). For example, we all know that in order for something to move, there has to be some force moving it. If you stop pushing a box across the floor, it will stop moving; if a car's engine stops working, the car will slow down and stop too. That's folk physics. Scientific physics disagrees: force causes acceleration, not velocity; in the absence of any other forces, once an object is set in motion it will keep moving forever. Of course it's that caveat which is responsible for the different conclusions of folk physics and scientific physics in this case: friction with the ground exerts a force on the box and the car and so robs them of their momentum. Folk physics works well enough for us in our everyday lives but would be disastrously misleading in, say, trying to dock a spacecraft to a space station.

I wonder if it's useful to apply this demarcation to military strategy? There have been attempts to formalise principles of strategy, of course, though trying to sciencise (yes, I just made that up) them by making them rigid formulae is not necessarily fruitful. Strategy has always been an art much more than a science, and as such is pretty intuitive itself. But certainly there can be (and probably usually is) a gap between what military leaders do and why they do it, and what everyone else, particularly civilians, understand them to be doing. This gap creates a space for folk strategy to exist.

Here's an example. The Luftwaffe left Glasgow and the Clydeside area alone for the first six months of the Blitz. At the end of that winter, a Mass-Observation team surveyed locals on whether they expected heavy air raids: 30% did, 28% did not, 42% had no opinion. That means that 58% of the population (there are no sample sizes or methodology given so who knows how accurate it is, but the exact numbers don't matter here) had formed some positive opinion about the intentions of the Luftwaffe's commanders concerning the Glasgow area. Based on what? Well, here's a list of the reasons given by the the 28% who thought Glasgow wouldn't be blitzed:

(i) air pockets over the Clyde generally;
(ii) mountainous area too dangerous for night flying;
(iii) a magnetic element in the mountains, which dislocates aircraft engines;
(iv) impossibility of locating the Clyde in a network of lochs and sea;
(v) adequacy of AA defences and depth of guns on the periphery;
(vi) distance inland or overland (very popular);
(vii) too far from German bases;
(viii) Germans not antagonistic to Scotland;
(ix) Germans believe revolution will develop here so long as bombs don't stir up the people (common upper and middle-class opinion).

Some of these reasons are based on an understanding of aeronautics (a folk aeronautics, perhaps): that there are things called 'air pockets' which are dangerous to aeroplanes, for example. Or that magnetic mountains are similarly a hazard (perhaps inspired by death ray stories). The suggestion that the Clyde was too far away from German bases was true in a way -- it explains why Hull, Plymouth and Southampton received more big raids -- but it still involves implicit assumptions about the range of German bombers. More purely folk strategic thinking are the last two suggestion, particularly the very last one: that the Germans don't want to create any Blitz spirit on the Clyde which would just increase solidarity between the classes. That's a clear attempt to divine German strategy, though it probably says more about the mistrust Glasgow's upper and middle-class had for their notoriously red working classes.

None of these rationales can have been based on any objective knowledge of Luftwaffe strategy, which was after all not discussed publicly by Germany or by Britain (except in general terms). They must have been based on assumptions, guesses, rumours, bits of news and the odd factoid here and there (motors use magnets so maybe a magnetic field can throw them off?) They were indeed naive, and in the end wrong, as the Clydeside blitz on the nights of 13 and 14 March 1941 showed. But do they amount to a folk strategy? Maybe not, at least not in the same way as there is a folk physics. In that case we develop it through our normal experience, and usually don't even need to think about it: it's almost hardwired in. Military strategy is not something most of us have to try and interpret or second-guess. Even in wartime the chance to do this would be limited, and probably wouldn't amount to a consistent picture of how and why events were taking place. The Glaswegians who came up with plausible reasons for why they had not been bombed quite likely found equally plausible reasons after the event to explain why they had been. In any case the very diversity of views points to a lack of coherence. But then again, perhaps that is because, as I suggested earlier, military strategy itself is not too coherent. Humans aren't as consistent as nature.

I do like this idea; I'm just not sure there's any use for it!

Part of my PhD thesis involved conceptualising the various forms of defence against aerial bombardment put forward during the thirty-odd years before the Second World War: things like anti-aircraft guns, air-raid shelters, an international air force, and so on. Something I didn't include was what we might call spiritual air defence. Partly because I didn't come across much like that in my sources, and probably partly because of my own rationalistic bent. This may have been unfortunate.

What do I mean by spiritual air defence? Here's what got me thinking about it: Padre Pio, Italy's flying monk. (Technically, bilocating, but that doesn't scan as well.) Here's a sober, historical account by Claudia Baldoli:

With the intensification of bombing after the armistice in September 1943, a rumour spread across Italy that God had granted Padre Pio could fly and intercept the enemy's bombs [...] it seemed plausible that Padre Pio could fly and intercept the enemy's bombs. With the exception of Foggia, which was repeatedly bombed between May and September 1943, the area of Apulia where he lived in Gargano received no raids, and this convinced many that the rumour must be true. For decades after 1944, the supporters of his case for beatification were even able to find RAF pilots who were willing to confirm that it was indeed an apparition of a flying apparition of a flying Padre Pio which had stared at them so directly that they abandoned the mission and returned to their bases without dropping bombs.

As might be expected, there are a number of accounts on the web which add more details but somehow don't add plausibility. One of the better ones is an article by Malcolm Day from the September 2002 Fortean Times. This doesn't mention the rumours circulating among the Italian population, only to the claims (or claims of claims) made by Allied pilots:

In their approach to the town [San Giovanni], several pilots reported seeing an apparition in the sky in the form of a monk with upheld hands. They also described some sort of 'force-field' that prevented them flying over the target rendering them unable to drop their bombs.

Supposedly this happened repeatedly, and was verified by 'Bernardo Rosini, general of the Aeronautica Italiana, and part of the United Air Command at the time' (presumably this means the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force, which flew on the Allied side, though not over Italian soil) and an unnamed 'US Commanding General'. Some posts on the ArmyAirForces forum provide some further (albeit conflicting) details, suggesting that the first raid took place on 16 July 1943, carried out by 5th Bombardment Wing, XII Bomber Command. An example of an eye-witness account (though written more than half a century after the event) can also be found there:

I almost killed Padre Pio.....the enclosed flight record of bombing raids, shows that Villa San Giovanni was scheduled to be wiped out with 150,000 pounds of bombs. Allied Intelligence had information (erroneous) that German troops had occupied the hospital, friary and town of San Giovanni. Two minutes from dropping the bombs, the Colonel in the lead aircraft saw an apparition of a Monk, 30,000 feet tall, and broke off the bomb-run and proceeded to the secondary target. The Colonel was a Protestant, and when he was later shown a photo of Padre Pio said that was the apparition.

A 30,000-foot tall monk would certainly seem enough to scare off anyone, but I am worried that more reliable accounts are not available. In any case, I'm more interested in the wartime rumours than the postwar stories which, as Baldoli notes, were used to argue for Pio's beatification. (I guess it helped: he was beatified in 1999 and canonised in 2002.)

This being history, there are always other examples. For example, the yogic flyers who, it was promised, would obviate the need for an anti-ballistic missile shield by jumping around on crash mats. This, they claimed, would reduce hostility throughout the world and so prevent an attack from taking place in the first place. (They scheduled a press conference in Washington DC to announce their plans on the morning of 11 September 2001. I don't know how it went.) Which itself is reminiscent of the efforts of Dion Fortune's Fraternity of the Inner Light, which between 1939 and 1942 used the combined psychic efforts of its members to influence the war in Britain's favour. Another British occultist, Gerald Gardner (a key figure in the founding of Wicca), also used magic to fight for Britain, performing a rite at the Rufus Stone on 31 July 1940, designed to prevent the coming German invasion. Later claims that yet another famous magician used his powers in an MI5 operation designed to lure Rudolf Hess to Britain, appear to be unfounded: Aleister Crowley's diaries show that the Great Beast did no such thing, though in February 1941 he did have an idea for 'a union of magicians to beat the Nazis' which he didn't follow through with.

Again, though, these are the efforts of (self-appointed, magical) elites. And we're drifting away from the air war too. What about popular beliefs in spiritual air defence? How about the vision of Christ seen by people in the village of Firle, near Lewes in Sussex, in November 1940:

The shepherd, Mr. Fowler, of Firle, told how he saw a white line spread across the sky and from it appeared a vision of Christ crucified on the Cross.

Then six angels took form, he said. They had long, white wings and one was playing a harp.

The vision lasted for two minutes then faded.

[...] he was not the only one who had seen the angels.

A Newhaven evacuee, Mrs. Steer, of The Street, Firle, and her sister, Mrs. Evans, said:

"We could see the nail in the crossed feet of Christ."

But although the vision was seen in the sky, it apparently was not specifically related to the air war in any way by those who saw it. Steer said that 'The village is taking the vision as a sign for a British victory'. A Daily Mirror reporter who interviewed Fowler found the shepherd wondering if 'it really was Christ come to help put our world straight again'. It's not quite what I'm after.

Perhaps A. E. Cook was inspired by the Firle visions. He was a munitions worker who saw believed that he saw angels 'all in white' converging on the cross on top of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral in London:

Those angels... were loved ones that had been taken away from us, but who, nevertheless, are still with us; yes, they and thousands of others... are still with us, watching over London, watching over Coventry, watching over Plymouth, watching over Bristol; watching over all those towns of ours that have felt the ruthlessness of German bombing.

The angels of St Paul's are more clearly related to the bomber war than the Jesus of Firle (though 'watching over' blitzed towns is still much more passive than flying overhead and intercepting bombers or erecting a force field). Vanessa Chambers quotes Cook's vision as an example of resorting to the supernatural in order to cope with the psychological stresses of the Blitz. But she argues that this was a rare response. Much more characteristic was the dramatic increase in interest in superstitions, charms and astrology, particularly in the form of newspaper horoscopes. The latter seems to have replaced the spiritualism of the First World War as the dominant esoteric response of the British people to war.

In fact, Chambers suggests that this supernatural turn can be likened to the fatalistic attitude of soldiers on the battlefield: if there's a bullet out there with your name on it, there's nothing you can do about it but accept what happens. Again, this is a passive, internal form of air defence (which I'm relieved to note is covered in my thesis's schema in the first section of chapter three). It may well be that the British people felt that their active defences were well enough provided for by the government, in the form of Fighter Command, Bomber Command, and Anti-Aircraft Command, whereas Italians felt entirely undefended and so had greater need of supernatural assistance. Or perhaps, as they say, more research is required.

In a discussion of the activities of MI5's Port Control section during the First World War, Christopher Andrew mentions German musings about using biological weapons against British civilians:

The most novel as well as the most sinister form of wartime sabotage attempted by Sektion P was biological warfare. At least one of its scientists in 1916 devised a scheme to start a plague epidemic in Britain, either by infecting rats or, more improbably, by dropping plague bacilli cultures from Zeppelins over ports. The Prusso-German General Staff, however, vetoed bacteriological warfare against humans as totally contrary to international law (the Hague Laws of Warfare).

But he doesn't provide any references. Is this plausible?

The British War Cabinet considered 'The possible Spread of Epidemics by dropping Germs from the Air' during its meeting on 9 February 1917. It accepted the advice from experts from the Royal Society, the Army Medical Service and the Local Government Board that the possibility was remote, and that any outbreak would be easily contained. Consequently Cabinet decided that 'no further action was required'. The expert reports themselves are quite interesting. That from Dr Arthur Newsholme, the chief medical officer of the Local Government Board, notes press reports of 'poisoned sweets and garlic saturated with garlic being stated to have been dropped at Constanza [Romania] from enemy aeroplanes'. Closer to home, the Board itself received a letter claiming that 'according to information "from a reliable source," infected sweetmeats had been dropped over Sheffield'. But, Newsholme added, no evidence had been produced in either case.

None of this relates to bubonic plague, however. And in Martin Hugh-Jones's summary of known (that is, by the British) wartime German biological warfare plans, plague is not mentioned. Most of the actual biological warfare activity by Germany during the First World War was directed towards anthrax and glanders, for use against horses, sheep and cattle. Nor does Hugh-Jones know of German wartime proposals to spread disease from the air (as opposed to proposals after the war, which is the focus of his article).

But bubonic plague can be weaponised and deployed from the air. Japan's Unit 731 proved that in China in 1940 and 1941, not only in controlled experiments but in field trials. And by field trials I mean, of course, bombing civilian areas with bubonic plague. There were at least four separate attacks, involving at most a handful of Japanese aircraft: Chuhsien, 4 October 1940; Ningpo, 27 October 1940; Kinhwa, 28 November 1940; and Changteh, 4 November 1941. The plague was not dropped in bombs but usually by way of fleas and grain; in two cases plague bacilli were detected by local hospitals. Only in Kinhwa did no outbreak of plague follow; a hundred people died in Ningpo alone.

So it does seem possible that German scientists considered using Zeppelins to rain black death upon Britain, and that it may even have worked. The British experts may have underestimated the potential of this form of aerial attack; and the psychological impact might have been far greater than the medical one. Then again, the great influenza pandemic in 1918 didn't disrupt the war to any great extent, and it killed far more people than any plague would have done. So the War Cabinet's lack of concern was justified, in the non-event.

Fears of poison gas attacks during the Blitz don't receive much attention from historians, and with good reason: not only did they not take place, but the evidence (for example, the number of gas masks being carried about) suggests that most people were complacent about the possibility. But not all. On 2 September 1940, a Mass-Observation investigator in London heard the following from a woman in her mid-30s:

There's a nasty rumour going around that Hitler's going to start using a gas this week that's going to penetrate women's bodies through their sex organs. Women will have to go about wearing sanitary towels all the time. Its [sic] going to cause a lot of disturbance.

Scientific implausibility aside, this rumour encapsulates the horror of gas, that it permeates inside the body and kills from within; and that as a product of science it might be developed into new and even more horrific forms. On the other, though, here the horror is a very gendered one, perhaps drawing upon existing anxieties about women's centrality to total war's front line (i.e. the home front) and the difficulties of maintaining feminine hygiene in a time of rationing and shortages. (The woman who passed on the rumour is described as 'normally much too "respectable" to mention such a subject', suggesting to the investigator how badly it had shaken her morale.) Or perhaps it has something to do with a perceived Nazi obsession with race and reproduction.

I wonder if there's a literary origin to this rumour. Shaw Desmond's rather science-fictional knock-out blow novel Chaos (1938) has a weapon which is reminiscent, though there it affects both sexes:

Then there was the Genital Gas, which was said to destroy the genitals of men and women, to make them childless for ever, and to turn their faces into smiling masks for them to strike horror amidst their fellows.

There's no way of knowing, but the 1940 rumour does sound like it could easily have started out as idle speculation inspired by something like the 1938 novel, and mutated into specifics and certainties from there.

Another source of information about public opinion on reprisals during the Blitz is hearsay -- what people reported that other people thought. This can give us an insight into contemporary judgements of the public mood. But, as with letters to the editor, hearsay is highly problematic too. It's only possible to get a good grasp on what other people think if you mix with them and talk to them (the 'everyone is complaining about how difficult it is to find servants this year' problem). So the insights may apply only to fairly narrow sections of the community. More dangerously, it's a common rhetorical trick to claim that what you think is what 'everyone' thinks, that what you're saying is what 'everyone' is saying. So as with letters to the editor, I find such claims more persuasive when they go against the grain, when someone admits that they are going against the majority. But if the overall picture points one way, that has evidentiary value too.

And, as it turns out, the majority of hearsay statements I've found claimed that other people wanted reprisals. Some of these very clearly only apply to small numbers of people. For example, H. H. G. Lewis, a young man from Southwark in London, wrote to the Daily Mirror to say that 'I and four friends are of the opinion that we bomb Germany in "retaliation" for what has been done here' (6 September 1940, 5). Usually, however, they were broader than that. Thus George E. Leon to The Times (27 September 1940, 9):

Among my many friends and acquaintances I have not met one who does not advocate retaliation. In my experience everybody is longing for it.

Sir George's 'many friends and acquaintances' were likely to be from the upper crust: he was writing from Warfield House in Berkshire (and his previous address was the rather more famous Bletchley Park). One more example: F. J. H. of Manchester claimed to have the pulse of the people (Manchester Guardian, 2 November 1940, 4):

I go about a good deal and talk to many people, and I feel sure that if a plebiscite were taken there would be an overwhelming majority in favour of reprisals.

By contrast, it's difficult to find the opposite viewpoint. But not actually impossible. J. R. Lumb wrote to The Times to say (3 October 1940, 7):

In recent weeks I have had occasion to meet and talk with some hundreds of the poor and homeless in London's inner suburbs [...] No one has spoken of defeat; no one has uttered a word of complaint; and no one, among those who have lost home and relatives, has used the word "reprisal" or its equivalent.

Lumb gave his address as 'The Rectory, Chislehurst, Kent' and presumably it was in his capacity as a cleric that he got to chat with London's poor. Perhaps his dog-collar put people off from expressing their more bloodthirsty opinions? (Though several clergymen did in fact use their pulpits to call for reprisals against Germany -- very much in the minority, I would guess.) Or perhaps they had other things on their minds, like finding somewhere to sleep or getting a hot meal.

Was there anyone swimming against the tide? Yes, although not among letter-to-the-editor-writers as far as I can tell. It was generally columnists and editors opposing reprisal bombing who would admit that public opinion was running the other way. Man O' The People, who had a weekly column in People, did this on several occasions. For example, the following was published on 29 October 1940 (6):

Bereaved and homeless people go from shelter to shelter, from temporary refuge to communal kitchen.

Their past is buried in the wreckage of their homes; their present is one of discomfort and danger; their future is on the lap of the gods.

From the depths of their feelings comes a cry for vengeance on those who have unleashed from the air the forces of destruction and terrorism.

It is a human cry, a natural reaction to the suffering which has spread like a blight over the bombed areas.

He adds:

THE writer cannot find in his heart the right to deny the fundamental justice of the demand that German cities and towns should be bombed without discrimination as our centres of population have been bombed.

But the question is not so simple as that.

He then goes on to argue that, at least 'at present', it would be better to continue bombing military objectives as the RAF is doing, while admitting that 'Such words bring little comfort to those whose clamour for vengeance grows daily in intensity'. The fact that this writer felt the need to tiptoe very carefully around the reprisals question, explaining how he was fully in sympathy with those who wanted German civilians to suffer too, shows that he felt that this was in fact a widely-held feeling among People readers, at any rate. (Though we don't necessarily need to believe him when he says that it's the bombed-out people who were crying for vengeance; it might be that this was an assumption on his part.)

There are other bits and pieces from diarists, Home Intelligence reports and the like. Here's one, a quote from Harold Nicolson's diary entry for 17 October 1940:

Robert Cary makes a long dissertation about how the public demand the unrestricted bombardment of Germany as reprisals for raids on London. Winston takes a long sip at his port gazing over the glass at Cary. 'My dear sir,' he says, 'this a military and not a civilian war. You and others may desire to kill women and children. We desire (and have succeeded in our desire) to destroy German military objectives. I quite appreciate your point. But my motto is "Business before Pleasure".'

'Winston' is of course the Prime Minister, Cary a parliamentary private secretary, and the sparring between them took place in the MP's smoking room at Westminster. Note that Cary's claim about what 'the public' wanted was not denied by Churchill (or by Nicolson).

So from all this I conclude that there was a widespread perception during the early part of the Blitz, at least, that the British public wanted reprisals. Perception is not necessarily reality, but here it's another piece of the puzzle.

But sometimes, it rhymes.

The above map, accompanying an article entitled 'BOMB THESE TEN TOWNS!', was published on page 4 of the Daily Mirror on 29 August 1940. It rhymes with this map published in the Daily Mail twenty-three years before:

A REPRISAL MAP. -- The shaded parts of this map show those parts of Germany within reach of Allied aeroplanes similar to those used against London. All the large towns shown could be attacked.

So too does this, the cover of the Illustrated London News for 21 September 1940...

BOMBERS' PREY.
GOERING'S ATTACKS ON LONDON ACHIEVE LITTLE BUT THE MAIMING AND SLAUGHTERING OF CHILDREN.

... rhyme with these photographs in the Daily Mail of 15 June 1917:

Four of the little sufferers in an East End hospital yesterday. Three are only five years of age; the fourth is ten. All were badly injured in the head, arms and legs while in a London County Council school in a densely populated district. All that was left of their classroom was a mass of blood-spattered debris.

And this scare in February 1940...

Mr Mitchell returned at 2.50 saying that Mr Moffat had told him that he had been told by the porter at Dunblane station this morning that the officials at Fife had told him to beware of what appear to be children's balloons. These balloons are full of poison gas. Anyone seeing one should refrain from touching it, but should call a policeman instead.

I said I thought the Germans would hesitate to use such a method, because the direction of the wind is west to east and we could so easily retaliate, and there was a risk that their own balloons would blow back on them. Mr Mitchell did not agree.

... (somewhat less successfully, it is true) rhymes with this scare from February 1918:

The "Chemist and Druggist" of London, of February 23 [1918], informs us that the German blackguards had, during that month, been dropping poisoned sweets from aeroplanes in the London area. It is quite inconceivable that any British general would issue a similar order for the poisoning of little German children, or, if it were given, of any British airman obeying it. An occurrence like this brings home to one, more than many of their acts, what a degraded being a German can be.

Not that history always rhymes, either. But the cadence is certainly familiar at times.

With apologies to Split Enz.

Previously, I identified a comparison between the reprisals debate in the First World War and the reprisals debate during the Blitz as something I could do that previous writers have not (except in passing, or implicitly). I won't have time in my AAEH paper for a full-blown comparative approach, or for that matter time before then to do the research; though perhaps I could for a version for publication. But it's something I can do briefly, and it helps that I already covered this in my thesis, where I looked at the British press reactions to the Gotha summer in 1917.

Schrecklichkeit is the German word for 'frightfulness'; both words were used by English-language speakers during the war to refer to the perceived German propensity for barbarous acts of war. In terms of British public opinion, the 'Rape of Belgium' was easily the most influential and inflammatory of these early in the war; later came the introduction of gas warfare; the execution of Edith Cavell; unrestricted submarine warfare; and of course the Zeppelin and Gotha raids on Allied cities, including London. Propaganda, mostly unofficial, kept this baleful view of the 'Hun' in the public eye. The photographs above, for example, were published in the Daily Mail after the first Gotha raid. The accompanying caption reads:

Four of the little sufferers in an East End hospital yesterday. Three are only five years of age; the fourth is ten. All were badly injured in the head, arms and legs while in a London County Council school in a densely populated district. All that was left of their classroom was a mass of blood-spattered debris.

(These are victims of the tragic bombing of the Poplar infants school.) Another example is a letter published in an Australian newspaper, but relaying information from the London Chemist and Druggist:

The "Chemist and Druggist" of London, of February 23 [1918], informs us that the German blackguards had, during that month, been dropping poisoned sweets from aeroplanes in the London area. It is quite inconceivable that any British general would issue a similar order for the poisoning of little German children, or, if it were given, of any British airman obeying it. An occurrence like this brings home to one, more than many of their acts, what a degraded being a German can be.

This sounds more like an urban legend than an actual tactic (and indeed, the only reference I can find to anything like this in The Times at this time is a rumour that strangers were giving children poisoned sweets in Kent), but it illustrates the depths to which it was believed Germans had sunk, and the essential difference between them and 'civilised' peoples like the British.

Though it was not the only response, the demand for reprisals in June and July 1917 was quite loud, and it did not just come from the press. Large public meetings held at Tower Hill and at the London Opera House endorsed resolutions such as one calling on 'the Government to 'pay back the enemy in the same way as he has treated this country'. Others went further. William Joynson-Hicks, a Conservative London MP, told the House of Commons that it was clear that Germany 'has declared deliberate war on the nation, the men, women and children of our country':

I submit to the House and the Government that the time is very rapidly approaching when, whether we like it or not, we shall be forced to declare war in the same way on the German people. Not that I have any desire whatever for the exercise of cruelty, or to slay Germans because they have slain our people. I say this because I believe it is the only possible way of bringing home to the German nation the enormity of what they have done -- that is, the adoption of the policy on their part of destroying the English civilian population in the way they have done. I ask the Government to state, not that there will be a small and insufficient raid on a town like Cologne or any similar German town, but that as soon as a raid of this sort, involving, as it has done, 500 casualties, takes place, stern and swift reprisals will take place on German towns.

Joyson-Hicks was not alone. Robert Bell MD, for example, wrote to the Daily Mail to insist that the Germans be told 'that for every air raid they make upon an innocent community we shall do our best to destroy one of their cities'. The Mail helpfully published this 'reprisal map of Germany', placed on the same page as the above photographs of child victims of the Gotha raid:

A REPRISAL MAP. -- The shaded parts of this map show those parts of Germany within reach of Allied aeroplanes similar to those used against London. All the large towns shown could be attacked.

We can classify opinions in the debate about reprisals for German frightfulness along two axes: morality and effectiveness. People -- at least those writing letters and leading articles -- asked (and then answered) two questions: are reprisals moral? and are reprisals effective? Actually, that's not quite true: they usually considered one or the other of these alone; the answer to the other was simply assumed to support their conclusion. Perhaps surprisingly, my impression is that those with moral concerns tended to be in favour of reprisal bombing, while those worried about effectiveness were more evenly split. Let's look at some examples.

Joynson-Hicks, in his speech quoted above, went on to explain that

the only certain way of stopping these raids, in spite of the defence we may make by means of our aeroplanes and anti-aircraft guns, is that we shall punish, and punish severely, raids of this kind by inflicting similar raids with certainty -- because they are useless without certainty -- on German towns.

So his was an argument based on effectiveness: by bombing German cities you will make them stop bombing ours. (Deterrence, in other words. Others put forward versions of the knock-out blow theory, believing that heavy air raids into Germany would make its people clamour for peace.) Some, however, did not accept this logic. 'Watchman', in a letter to The Times, argued that

The best reprisal is the heaviest military blow. I can conceive of nothing weaker or more contemptible than to send our airmen off on long and hazardous expeditions without any military object, either direct or indirect, but merely to kill a certain number of children, women, and old men in the vain hope that the Germans will then cease from murdering our own civilian population [...] Say we succeeded in killing two or three hundred civilians in Cologne, and lost, as we very well might, 25 aeroplanes out of 50 in achieving this result, how the Prussian High Command would chuckle and slap their thighs at having succeeded in inducing "these English madmen" to play the German game!

In essence such arguments boiled down to the belief that these bombers and their pilots would be better employed on the Western Front, supporting the Allied armies there. (This of course is a major difference with the situation in the Second World War, at least after Dunkirk, where one argument for strategic bombing was that there was no other way to strike at Germany.) But note the bleedthrough of moralising language here: British airmen would 'kill' German civilians to stop German airmen from 'murdering' British civilians. And the cunning 'Prussian High Command', laughing as the foolish Britishers fall into the trap of tit-for-tat reprisals to no military purpose.

The moral arguments against reprisal bombing was straightforward enough: if it was wrong for Germany to bomb civilians then it was wrong for Britain to do so too. One bereaved mother expressed this as follows:

I have given two sons to the war (my only two) and they will never come back to me. I gave them willingly, and I have no regrets; I gave them to help to free the world from tyranny and barbaric savagery, and I believe that by giving up their young lives they have "done their bit" towards that end. But should I live to see Englishmen sent to murder in cold blood German women and children and harmless civilians, then indeed I should begin to ask, "Have my sons died in vain?"

Another correspondent had no such qualms:

After the recent experience of German frightfulness, what other course is open to us but that of fighting the enemy with his own weapons? When the Germans used liquid fire against our brave fellows, were we not justified in resorting to the same method in order to protect our men from the most horrible of deaths, and to "bring home" to "the apostles of culture" the barbarity of their methods? [...] To advocate the policy of "turning the other cheek" under present conditions, seems to me a misuse of Our Lord's teaching. If a man hit me once, I should probably turn the other cheek and let him hit me again; and if that method failed to make him ashamed of himself, I should be compelled to "go for" him in self-defence. But if a man attacked my children, I should knock the brute down without the slightest hesitation.

The author of this letter was J. Stephens Roose, president of the Metropolitan Free Church Association.

I could go on, but won't. Hmm... maybe this is not something I can do briefly after all.

On 23 April 1918, this brief article, filed from Melbourne, was the lead story in a number of Australian newspapers:

Within the past 48 hours information has come to hand which points to the probability that the realities of war will soon be brought before Australians in a most convincing fashion. Steps have been taken by the Defence authorities to cope with a situation which may at any moment assume grave proportions. More than this cannot be said for the present.

That's not much, but it seems to have created quite a stir: according to the Perth Sunday Times, 'Australia was startled out of its somnolence'. The Melbourne Argus reported that 'Uneasiness was caused in Melbourne and in other centres' by the previous day's story, giving rise to 'most exaggerated rumours in the city'. A report in the New Zealand press also dated 24 April (but not published for another week) noted that the public in Sydney 'fairly seethed in excitement' at this news when it was published in the Daily Telegraph. Why? The report explains that

At the moment, Australia is suffering an attack of nerves in the matter of raiders, and any old story is accepted and sent wildly circulating. Certain definite signs of uneasiness in official circles, and certain things which cannot be hidden from the people have given colour to the wildest rumours. There is "something doing" -- but nothing to justify the excited stories of an imminent enemy attack on Australia which are now current.

So it seems that rumour had already prepared Australians to think that German naval raiders were lurking off the coast, and when they were told that 'the realities of war' might soon be present to them 'in a most convincing fashion', they believed that this meant an 'imminent enemy attack on Australia'. Or, as the Sunday Times put it, they had 'Visions of a German squadron breaking the British blockade and landing an expeditionary force on the Commonwealth coast'.

The reason given by the New Zealand journalist for this 'attack of nerves' is the mystery aeroplane sightings: those at Toora and Casterton are mentioned, and that Australian aeroplanes could not be shown to be responsible. Then there were 'reports of aeroplanes and strange lights on or near the coast between Melbourne or Sydney' -- which I haven't come across yet -- 'and a whole crop of rumours based on certain events of which the censorship forbids mention'. More government cover-ups! But the New Zealander perhaps slips one past the censor with this gem used to introduce the story:

A couple of days ago a man, selling the noon editions of the evening papers, stood in Castlereagh-street [Sydney] bawling "Raiders off the Queensland Coast." The rush for papers nearly carried him off his feet; and when the purchasers of his wares found not a line about a raider anywhere, they just grinned and, in the strange Australian way, seemed more inclined to commend his enterprise than damn his dishonesty.

I have no idea if the newspaper-seller was passing on a rumour he'd heard or just made it up on the spot, but this episode permits us a brief insight into the way these stories might have spread.

So what was the story behind this ill-advised warning? It seems that, thanks to the mystery aeroplane sightings, the government did in fact take seriously the possibility that German commerce raiders were operating off the Australian coast at this time. I haven't found a good account of this episode (possibly because of my unfamiliarity with Australian historiography) but we can reconstruct much of it from both primary and secondary sources.

First of all, there's a statement from the Minister for Defence, made the same day as that alarming press report:

Referring yesterday to the rumours, which were in circulation, the Minister for Defence (Senator George Pearce) stated that there was nothing that need alarm the public, but it had been thought advisable to take certain action of a precautionary nature to guard against any interference with our shipping.

Why was it 'thought advisable'? Well, confirming the New Zealander's narrative, Pearce went on to speak 'in reference to the various reports of aeroplanes having been seen in certain places in Victoria'. He didn't comment directly on their reality (or lack thereof), but for the benefit of planespotters explained how to distinguish friend from foe:

All British and Australian aeroplanes are visibly marked with three concentric circles of colour -- red, white, and blue.

German planes are marked with large black crosses, in the shape of the "Iron Cross."

He then pointed out that 'Any German or other enemy subject using an unmarked plane, or one with British markings, is subject to the penalty of a spy'. Once again, this opens up the possibility of a threat not just from a German warship, but from German agents too. A commentator in the Evening News remarked that

It is not impossible for enemy sympathisers in Australia to manufacture an aeroplane or two; indeed, there are certain lonely districts in Victoria where the thing might be done. Not impossible, but not probable.

Any sightings should be reported 'at once to the nearest military officer or the police, and that not only should markings be described, but date and time, direction from and to, sound, and if possible sketch of outline'. So the mystery aeroplanes were clearly a matter of concern, and the reason for the precautions.

And what were the nature of those precautions? They should not be exaggerated: as of 23 April, one shipping company was advised by the Royal Australian Navy that 'it need have no fear for its vessels [...] Enquiries of other shipping firms showed that not one single sailing had been cancelled'. So Pearce's precautionary measures did not extend to the interruption of commerce.

But what did happen was a not-insubstantial mobilisation of what few military and naval forces Australia had left for home defence. Coastal defence batteries which had been stood down were 'remobilised and the forts again manned for a month' in April 1918. German men interned at Trial Bay on the NSW coast were moved inland to Holsworthy at about this time too, because of the possibility of a rescue by a German raider.

Obviously the greatest burden of defence against raiders would fall on the Navy. The official history of the Navy in the war has this to say:

In 1918 the news of the Wolf’s doings of the year before, the possibility that Germany might get a successor to her through the blockade, and the widespread rumours concerning enemy aeroplanes -- too numerous to be neglected, however unlikely -- made it advisable to establish a more thorough system of patrols. The lack of warships was made up for, as far as possible, by commissioning a number of small craft, which could at any rate give warning of an enemy’s approach, and by resuscitating the older warships, however inefficient.

In the areas near where the mystery aeroplanes were spotted, the patrol vessels were Coogee (a converted ferry), Countess of Hopetoun and Protector (the latter two survivors from colonial days), with others covering the coast right round from Western Australia to the Torres Strait.

And what of the Australian Flying Corps? As noted in my previous post, it had just one bomber available in Australia, an F.E.2b. And according to James Kightly, it was based at Alberton in Victoria from 20 April, and later moved to Yarram. From these bases it conducted reconnaissance sweeps off the Gippsland coast looking for German commerce raiders until at least May. An unarmed Maurice Farman Shorthorn assisted Protector in her patrols from Bega, on the south-eastern coast of NSW. James also notes that 'In March-April 1918, there were numerous "sightings" of lights in the sky and on the grounds and mysterious aeroplanes -- leading to the conclusion that up to four raiders could be operating off the coast of Australia' -- so in fact he beat me to these mystery aircraft!

And that's pretty much where the story ends, at far as I can tell. There were very few more mystery aeroplane reports. On 29 April, an aeroplane flying over Sydney 'caused many of the people who saw it to become unnecessarily alarmed': it was in fact a new military aeroplane being test-flown by Lieutenant Stutt. And nearly a month later, the Grey River Argus in New Zealand claimed that 'A report was circulated in town last evening that an aeroplane had been seen over the sea near the hospital last evening' (yes, that's two 'last evening's, so either 28 or 29 May). No suggestion that it was mysterious in any way, but then why report it?

That seems an unsatisfactory place to leave it. Perhaps I'll leave the last word to our Kiwi friend, who (in a different version of the article quoted above) places the raider scare in the context of the failure of the government to win public approval for conscription, the continuing German offensive in France and Australia's defencelessness. Scares have their uses, after all...

But military circles are likely to be disappointed. They did not expect compulsion for service abroad, but they did think that men would be compelled to provide a couple of divisions at least for home defence. The anti-compulsionists won all along the line at the recruiting conference last week, and now only volunteers are called for, to build up a small home army. Certain possibilities make that home army quite a necessity but apparently it is to be built up with all the muddling and expense that marked the creation of the armies now abroad.

PS Okay, here's a different last word, a memory of a 1909 scareship sighting in Western Australia: Sunday Times (Perth), 28 April 1918, 6!