Comments for Airminded

Comment on The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — II by Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:32:56 +0000

The Queen Bees not only existed, but they get inside the “British antiaircraft fire control=bad” narrative, since the story is that the initial Queen Bee trials showed that the interwar AA fire control didn’t work. Then when you try to wrap your mind around this you suddenlly discover a branch of history that needs control theory. Just when you thought you’d left simple harmonic motion behind you….
Anyway, the narrative here strikes me as very similar to the disappearance of the “Parliamentary Air Garden Party” of June, 1939, when a select group of MPs were taken out and shown all the Gee Whiz stuff the RAF had been working on. It wasn’t quite what it could have been, beacause the Stirling prototype was pranged, but it was probably a big deal to spectators, what with all the “mystery ships” (Botha, Beaufort, Gloster F.9/37, first Spitfires with CSU screws) flying about. The thing is, it just disappears from the history of the leadup to War, even as a potential explanation for the German Air Ministry’s similar show for Hitler in the next month, which is given a somewhat prominent place in the historiography.
I come back to my hair brained theory that there _is_ something significant to the Tom Swift narrative (I keep using that word, but, heck, this is just an Internet comment), and something significant about the fact that it systematically skips British developments. The “matter of Britain” excludes technological innovation a priori, not because the British didn’t innovate, but, because technological innovation was too important to the British economy for social criticism to concede it!

Comment on The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — II by Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:33:45 +0000

Radio-controlled robot planes? I thought that was science fiction in the ’20s and ’30s, not something that could be under serious consideration.

Wow.

Comment on The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — I by Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:35:13 +0000

Finally dredged up the notion that may be on the AP annotator’s mind: “aerial mine.” And if the original citation is correct, my guess would be that it is a radio-sonde (i.e. weather balloon) that’s got itself into the middle of the action.

Comment on The mystery car of Maldon by Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:12:33 +0000

It’s not just the flying characteristics of the Zeppelins which were appalling, they had an abysmal navigational record as well. London they could usually manage to find, blackout or no (the Thames helped). But there are many examples of them utterly failing to find their intended target. For example, the target for the 15 April 1915 raid was the Humber estuary, over 200 km to the north. Not only did the German commanders not reach their target, they apparently didn’t know where they actually were. So they just bumbled around looking for something, anything, which looked bombworthy. That improved somewhat during the war, perhaps: the town bombed in the course of the 16 June 1917 raid I also mentioned (giving the wrong date!) was Ramsgate; the Zeppelin captain claimed he had bombed Dover, so he was only about 20 km out. So simply on a probability basis, for there to have been any German spies available to signal to these wayward airships, there would have to have been a vast espionage network, ready to spring into action whenever one appeared nearby. Very le Queux, but it never existed.

Comment on The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — I by Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:53:25 +0000

Yeah, it’s probably a barrage balloon — after all, that’s what the Me 109 was after — but it’s odd that the caption specifically says that it isn’t. (Unless that refers to the cigar-shaped thing …)

About the different expectations: could well be. But it wouldn’t hurt British morale (a key concern at this time) to encourage the belief that they had some secret weapons on their side. Also, in the next few posts I will suggest that this pattern held true before the war as well.

Comment on Jet aircraft of the Belle Époque by Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:39:18 +0000

Yes, I did see that, Ian, and Nemesis isn’t doing himself any favours here with that sort of talk.

Comment on Tremayne and Crowan by Niall Baird

Niall Baird — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Thanks Brett – its very similar to my family’s one (from memory). I’ll have to have a look tonight and see if I can post it somewhere.

Comment on Tremayne and Crowan by Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:29:31 +0000

Niall:

The names on that cross are Eliza Commins (wife of Benedict) and Mary, her daughter.

Comment on The mystery car of Maldon by Snoopy

Snoopy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:19:49 +0000

Quote;-’We know now that there were no German spies motoring about East Anglia at night giving directions to incoming Zeppelins. It’s an operationally pretty absurd idea, for one thing; it was hardly possible to accurately navigate a Zeppelin to a given area of coastline for a night-time rendezvous.’;-
Yes, it all sounds rather silly, but, history is a funny thing, ‘Knowing’ and believing are not the same. That said, wars were, and are, full of pretty improbable stories. A few years ago, some cottages near an airfield I used to use a lot in the UK were being renovated. In the lofts an old but complex and carefully-hidden system of aerials was discovered. It was all 1940’s vintage. The airfield, being way out west was not exactly in the front-line and only used for training ‘39-’45. They were obviously clandestine aerials, but there was no local knowledge of any master-spies being unearthed there. One more little mystery, but certainly nothing in the public domain, inless there is some obscure reference at the PRO.
The Jerries shelled and bombed some other pretty unimportant targets in the UK in both wars. Certainly even small torches were used to signal for SOE drops in the Second World War. Actually, it’s amazing what CAN bee seen at night.
As for navigation, well apart from airships presumably having the flying characteristics of a proverbial s**thouse-door, there is no logical reason why an airship couldn’t be flown and navigated at night. How else did they find their way home…? On a night with any degree of moon, coastlines, rivers, even streams and ponds are crystal-clear and perfectly usable to navigate by, so even with a black-out, it might be easier to fly VFR than a dodgy day.
Still, ‘the phantom cars’ sounds like a scenario for Herr von Toad….!

Comment on The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — I by JDK

JDK — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:28:32 +0000

What fun! First I’m glad too see it was a Messerschmitt 109, and not a Heinkel 113. It’s amazing the number of aces whose combat reports are full of 113s and (later) biographies only refer to 109s…

And would the gentleman from the Daily Mirror please provide his source relaying opinion from the Luftwaffe?

There were visible aerial British ’secret weapons’ available and some deployed in the period, including stuff like Parachute and Cable (PaC) but the best that can be said for them is that ’secret’ is what was best about them – next to ‘best forgotten’.

90 gets 1 that it’s just a barrage balloon, things in the sky easily looking ‘odd’ in photos without any effort.

As to the differing reporting on the other sides of the Atlantic, they might have something to do with different expectations of potential British achievement. To generalise wildly, the Brits expected to win by hard graft and that it was going to be a close run thing, but perhaps believed no secret weapons needed*; while (some of) the American public may have been supporting the British, but saw that the W.W.II tote stated Germany had a clean sweep to date – and therefore the odds were against the UK – so a secret weapon might just be the leveller.

(*In fact the efficacy of the RDF (radar) systems and their durability under attack, as well as the system for directing limited numbers of fighters were two very effective British secret weapons in action which, unarguably, were crucial in the Battle.)

Regards,