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.

The uses and abuses of counterfactual history

By in After 1950, Australia, Counterfactuals, Periodicals 8 Comments

The death last week of Margaret Thatcher was, naturally enough, the occasion of a plethora of reflections on her place in history. Equally naturally, the value of these reflections varies (and no doubt depends partly on the politics of both the writer and the reader). One of the less valuable ones was written by Dominic Sandbrook, a historian who is best known for his well-received series of books on Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. His next book will cover the early 1980s and so his is an obvious shoulder to tap for some historical perspective on Thatcher's Britain. Which makes what he did choose to write, a piece for the Daily Mail called 'Cuba without the sunshine', all the more disappointing.

Part of the problem lies in the unusual form chosen for his article: it's a counterfactual history of Britain since 1978, assuming that the Labour Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, called and won an early election in October of that year, instead of waiting until May 1979 and going down to Thatcher's Conservatives, as actually happened. In principle there's nothing wrong with this. We implicitly admit the importance of counterfactual histories when we label some trend or event as being historically important, because we're really saying is that if that trend or event didn't happen then the subsequent course of history would have been different in some significant way (at least for the particular domain of history involved). So we should be able to use counterfactuals to think about Thatcher's importance.
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Saturday, 12 April 1913

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

The third leading article in today's Economist is entitled 'Airship fiascos and preliminary puffs' (p. 868). It begins by casting back to 'A FEW weeks ago, just before and after the Army and Navy Estimates were introduced', when 'a section of the Press was filled with lurid accounts of the danger in which Great Britain stood from the immensely powerful air fleet of Germany, and from our own unpreparedness':

A very timely warning was found in the mysterious apparitions which hovered over quiet English fishing towns and villages by night, displaying bright lights. Evidently, said the alarmist Press, this was a German airship come over to spy out our secret defences, and the flesh of the public was for some days made to creep, until the mystery dissolved in a planet and a fire balloon. So the panicmongers were covered with ridicule, and the whole airship scare appeared to die down after Easter.

But now, 'in the last few days [...] we again have impressed upon us the "Peril of the Air," and the menace which German airships constitute to our naval supremacy'. The Economist detects 'a commercial background' to all this, 'as there was to "Daily Mail bread"':

for aught we know, the anonymous experts who clamour for public money may be acting in close association with airship company promoters. Certainly much of the stuff we read is exactly like the preliminary puffs that would be sent out if the circumstances are as our information suggests. In that case, Colonel Seely and Mr Churchill may well be cautious, remembering that the Marconi business was largely promoted as a great measure of Imperial defence.

It then goes on to undermine the claims being made for the awesome power of the airship, pointing out 'it is never possible for long to exaggerate the power or reliability of any kind of air craft, for almost every day some accident occurs to prove how limited is man's conquest of the air'. For example, only three weeks ago the new military Zeppelin Ersatz Z1 — 'Curiously enough, this was the very airship which was supposed to have made the surreptitious trip to England, referred to above' — broke in half on the ground, after being subjected to a strong wind for an hour.
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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.

Acquisitions

By in Acquisitions, Books 9 Comments

Peter Gray. The Leadership, Direction and Legitimacy of the RAF Bomber Offensive from Inception to 1945. London and New York: Continuum, 2012. An interesting title, and looks like an accurate one (if an annoyingly difficult one to shorten for citations!) Gray's background before doing his PhD (which this book is based upon) is in the RAF, where he was director of the Defence Leadership and Management Centre; so he certainly has useful experience to bring to the first two parts of the title. But it's probably his take on the legitimacy question that I'll most be interested to read. Well, that and the chapter on the intellectual context.

Friday, 11 April 1913

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

A prominent headline on the front page of the Daily Express today rather startlingly refers to the 'BOMBARDMENT OF LONDON', a 'NIGHT VISIT FROM A DIRIGIBLE', and a 'WAR LESSON' (p. 1). It turns out that the capital has not been destroyed by a sudden Zeppelin raid; rather, Londoners are promised that tomorrow night an airship will give 'a remarkable [but peaceful] demonstration of the ease with which a great city like the metropolis can be bombarded from the air' (p. 1):

The 'Express' is in a position to state that a powerful dirigible — the whereabouts of which is at present a strict secret — will manœuvre over the centre of London between 10 and 11.30 p.m. The dirigible will be equipped with brilliant searchlights, which will be flashed on many of the principal buildings, and will be strong enough to enable the aeronauts to distinguish pedestrians and vehicles in the streets.

This airship will, quite intentionally, be a scareship:

For months past accounts have been received from all parts of the United Kingdom recording the presence of mystery airships with lights attached. The reports came from places as far apart as Cardiff and Hull, Chester and Sheerness. Now, for the first time, if weather conditions permit, the people of London will be able to realise the terrifying possibilities if a foreign airship were cruising overhead, and raining explosives along its course.

The plan is for the airship to 'make a circuit of the centre and West End of London'. A 'special representative' from the Express will be aboard to record 'every incident and impression of what will be one of the most striking proofs of the part which can be played by aircraft in nocturnal warfare'.

The Yeovil Western Gazette, a weekly newspaper, has a report of the Lunéville incident, which copies the widely-published Reuters cable noting the previous rumours of 'the mysterious flight of airships over the Eastern frontier' of France (p. 8).

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.

The Israeli rocket scare of 1963

By in 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, After 1950, Books, Cold War, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics No Comments

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

I learned something new from an article in the March 2013 issue of History Today:

Exactly half a century ago, in the spring of 1963, Israel was suddenly gripped by a curious mass panic. Sensational newspaper reports and radio announcements claimed that the country was threatened by enemy 'atom bombs', 'fatal microbes', 'poison gases', 'death rays' and a 'cobalt warhead' that could 'scatter radioactive particles over large areas'. Within hours, opinion in the entire country had been ignited. Parliamentary debates, everyday conversations, even songs and poems were all preoccupied obsessively with the same theme — that Israel was confronted by the imminent threat of another Holocaust, less than two decades after the first.

The source of this supposedly dire foreign menace was not Iran, nor the Soviet Union, although superpower tension at this stage in the Cold War was certainly intense. The perceived threat instead emanated from Egypt, which over the past decade had been led by the supremely charismatic and populist military officer, 44-year-old President Gamal Abdul [sic] Nasser.

Several months before, in the early hours of July 21st, 1962 Nasser had stunned the world by successfully test-firing a number of rockets. Specially-invited contingents of foreign journalists and cameramen had been driven to a remote spot deep in the Egyptian desert, not far from the central Cairo-Alexandria highway. They watched as a massive explosion shook the ground and a white missile lifted itself from a camouflaged position, a short distance in front of them. As one American correspondent wrote: 'It pierced a long, white cloud and later, in plain view, slowly arched to the north towards the Mediterranean.' Over the next few hours three more launches were carried out in quick succession before the journalists returned home, amid scenes of jubilation from ecstatic crowds. The Egyptian public had heard the news when a special announcement, broadcast on a national public holiday, announced on government radio that Egypt had 'entered the missile age'.

Given my interests, this sounds like something I need to know more about; and as chance would have it, the author of the article, Roger Howard, has a book due out later this year which may provide more details (Operation Damocles: Israel's Secret War Against Hitler's Scientists, 1951-1967). According to Howard's article, the real reason for the scare was not so much the Egyptian rocket programme itself, but the involvement of many German scientists who had worked for the Nazis in the Second World War, such as the aerospace (and his expertise did span both air and space) engineer Eugen Sänger. In fact, Howard argues that it was to deflect attention from the recent exposure of Operation Damocles, the intimidation of Nasser's German scientists, that Mossad director Isser Harel briefed the Israeli press with a wholly exaggerated account of Egypt's offensive capabilities. As Howard shows, and as cooler heads argued at the time, the targeting problem had not been solved, meaning the chance of a rocket hitting anything important was remote, as 1967 proved. Nor did Egypt even have a WMD programme at this time, rockets aside. The scare subsided; Harel was discredited and soon resigned.

While I don't (and can't) dispute Howard's account, from my perspective I wonder if the fear of new technological perils might have played as important a role as the spectre of Nazi-Egyptian collaboration. There are parallels to be drawn forwards and backwards in time, in Israel and elsewhere. Israeli fears about nuclear weapons and missile threats from its neighbours resurfaced in 1981, 1990-1, the 2000s, and today. Only six months before the Israeli rocket scare, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. All those lurid weapons mentioned in the Israeli press in 1963 — fatal microbes, poison gases, death rays, atom bombs, even cobalt warheads — had been staples of scaremongers in other countries for years, in most cases decades. In Britain, similar press panics over the danger of air attack took place in 1913, 1922, 1935 and 1938. It would be strange if Israel in 1963 was immune to such fears.

Wednesday, 9 April 1913

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

Manchester Guardian, 9 April 1913, 9

It's been a while, but after three previous visits the mystery airship has returned to Cardiff. From the Manchester Guardian (p. 9; above):

Our Cardiff correspondent sends a report that again last night [8 April 1913] an aircraft was seen at Cardiff, where one was reported to have been seen frequently at the beginning of the recent airship scare. The Chief Constable of Glamorganshire (Captain Lindsay), who previously issued a description of the circumstances under which he saw a supposed airship, and asked for reports from anyone who had made observations, is said to have seen the one last night, with the Deputy Chief Constable and others, from the county police station. It is stated that it travelled at a high speed, and passed over the western district of Cardiff. It was first sighted at 8 23 coming from the north, and was lost sight of at 8 25, going in a south-westerly direction towards Weston-super-Mare. It had a powerful searchlight beneath it, and its speed is estimated by the police as being from 60 to 70 miles an hour.

A few other newspapers carry a briefer account: the Aberdeen Daily Journal, the Irish Times, and the Manchester Courier. The latter's version is longest (p. 7):

Great excitement was caused at Cardiff last night by the passage over the city of an aircraft, whether dirigible or aeroplane could not be discerned. The vessel carried a brilliant light and disappeared over the Bristol Channel. Great crowds of people watched the vessel from the streets.

The Courier's headline claims that the Cardiff object was 'WATCHED BY THOUSANDS'. Only on one previous occasion, just over two months ago, has it been claimed that such a large number of people witnessed a phantom airship, and that too was in Cardiff and environs.

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.

This powder kills fascist aero-engines

By in 1930s, 1940s, Air defence, Civil defence, Periodicals 5 Comments

I've written before about how the air defence problem seemed to inspire 'wildly creative' thinking in the early 20th century. Here are a couple more examples, submitted to the British government by members of the public, c. 1943 — the one effectively a form of death ray, the other a (technically) non-lethal weapon:

One of the most popular discarded suggestions was that the atmosphere should be flooded with carborundum powder which would be sucked into the fascist aero-engines and chew them to pieces. It is difficult to convince people that there is an awful lot of atmosphere!

Another one was that they should spread throughout the atmosphere 'a gas' (unknown to the suggestor — to be discovered by the chemist) which would congeal round the plane in flight, and when the crew baled out, would wrap itself around them so that they would arrive on the ground like chickens in gelatine. This was the solution of the paratroop problem!

The desire of these would-be inventors to help defend the nation (and perhaps profit handsomely) exceeded their knowledge of science and engineering.

The author of the article from which the above quotation is taken was Ritchie Calder, a former journalist then doing propaganda work for the Political Warfare Executive. Maybe that's how he came to be writing about the contributions of British scientists to the war effort for an American publication, Popular Astronomy:

Their maximum accuracy is in the air, in spite of three-dimensional fighting. When one hears of a thousand-plane raid being packed into fifty-five minutes over a single town in Germany, one should remember not only the vast ground organization, the transport supplies, the loading of the bombs, the timing of the take-off and returns, but also the intensive work of the scientists behind the operation.

But while Calder only deviates from such broad generalisations when poking fun at death rays and gelatin gases, this article does combine two things he was interested in: explaining science and defeating bombing. Before the war, Calder had been science editor for the News Chronicle; during the Blitz, he was a crusader for better post-raid welfare and shelter conditions. It's interesting that one of his sons, Nigel Calder, became a noted science journalist, while another, Angus Calder, became one of the most influential historians of the Blitz.

Saturday, 5 April 1913

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

Dundee Courier, 5 April 1913, 5

Z4 had only a brief stay in Lunéville. It has already flown back to Metz, though not before being searched by the authorities for any evidence that the Zeppelin had been photographing French defences. They didn't find any, but did impose a £300 customs duty anyway (which will be refunded). Except in the frontier provinces, French opinion seems little disturbed by the uninvited visitor; the German press is less sanguine, being concerned by the possibility of Zeppelin's secrets being revealed. Indeed, there is a suggestion that Z4's commander should have destroyed the airship rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of the French.

There is some more discussion today of the Lunéville incident in relation to mystery airship sightings. The Irish Times says (p. 7)

It is considered certain that the Zeppelin which came down at Luneville [sic] yesterday, is the same one which was seen cruising over Vesoul, and flying low over the forts of Epinol [sic]. It is therefore estimated that the vessel must have flown over about 24 miles of French territory. French aeronautical experts have naturally taken advantage of this opportunity to find out as much as possible about the aerial visitor.

While a leading article in the Irish Independent notes that (p. 4)

All through the foreign airship scare in England no one succeeded in actually sighting the mysterious airship, though its lights were alleged to have been seen from time to time. The French have been more lucky, for they actually captured, though not through any merit of their own, the newest and biggest of the German Zeppelin dirigibles.

And the Dundee Courier asks 'WAS ZEPPELIN Z4 THE MYSTERY AIRSHIP SEEN OVER BRITAIN'? (p. 5; above):

It is interesting to note that the dirigible is that which has been suspected of visiting various points along the British coast.

After a brief summary of the Sheerness affair and the sensation it caused, the Courier discusses 'France "seeing things"' as well as Britain:

Since then there has been a remarkable succession of reports from various British coast centres, and though it is probable that most of these may have been due to an over-heated public imagination it has emerged in the telegrams regarding the Zeppelin's latest exploit that France has also been 'seeing things' in the way of nocturnal aerial visitors.

Unfortunately, no details are provided of these French scareships.

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.

Friday, 4 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships 1 Comment

There's some sensational airship-related news today. Many newspapers report that yesterday an airship was forced down at Lunéville after first getting lost and then had mechanical problems. The reason why this is sensational is because Lunéville is in France and because the airship is German: the very latest Zeppelin, Z4, which has been undertaking proving flights before being handed over to the German Army. Indeed, half a dozen German officers were onboard as observers. The crew has been detained and the French Army is keeping the Zeppelin under guard while the government decides what to do about the unexpected visitor, which is intact but has been temporarily disabled.

As a real life example of an unauthorised German airship flight over foreign soil, Z4's misadventure inevitably brings to mind the mystery airships seen over Britain over the past few months. But more than that, it turns out that mystery airships have also been seen over France, though details are sketchy. Many newspapers carry the following from Reuter's Paris correspondent, including the Freeman's Journal, the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, the Manchester Courier, and the Standard; the following quote is from the Manchester Guardian's version (p. 9):

Various rumours have been current regarding the mysterious flights of airships over the eastern frontier, but the inhabitants of Lunéville were none the less startled to perceive, towards 12 30 to-day [3 April 1913], manœuvring in the mist overhanging the town, a large yellow dirigible, apparently coming from the direction of Nancy. The airship was flying at a great height and ultimately disappeared, but at about 1 20 it returned, circled several times around the Church of Saint Jacques, and finally descended, landing on the military parade ground.

The Daily Mirror's own Paris correspondent says something very similar (p. 4):

In view of the rumours circulated recently of mysterious flights of airships over the eastern frontier, Lunéville this afternoon was decidedly startled by the descent of a German airship of a new Zeppelin type in the manœuvring ground.

The Derby Daily Telegraph, drawing on the Daily News's correspondent, says that 'It is now France's turn to have a German airship scare' (p. 2).

A message from Vesoul states that this morning a grey airship of the Zeppelin type manœuvred over the district. Seven men were seen in the car of the vessel, which was travelling at a great height and speed. Vesoul is a town 75 miles nearly due south of Luneville [sic], and both are important frontier fortresses.

According to the 'Liberte,' [sic] there have been many recent flights of Zeppelin airships over France.

And a leading article in the Aberdeen Daily Journal notes that (p. 6):

We have heard much of late in this country about the visits of mysterious airships, and if similar rumours have been abroad in France, the French authorities have now the satisfaction, which we have not had, of knowing that alien airships have actually been spying out, or at least hovering over, forbidden ground.

However, it suggests that the Lunéville incident 'is an interesting rather than an important piece of news'.
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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.

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