Seeking Sonora

By in 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, Aircraft, Art, Before 1900, Books, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures No Comments

Dellschau 1969

The art of Charles Dellschau has been receiving some attention lately, thanks to the recent publication of a book about his work. Dellschau, who produced thousands of strange and wonderful watercolours, drawings and collages in Houston, Texas, between about 1899 and 1922, is significant as an early outsider artist, but he is mainly of interest to me for two things. Firstly, his subject matter: his artwork is filled with strange flying machines (balloons? airships? aeroplanes?) intermingled with press clippings about aviation. Secondly, his overarching narrative: that his artwork records the activities of the Sonora Aero Club, a secret group of airminded inventors who actually created and flew the aircraft he depicted in California in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a beguiling idea, and some of Dellschau's admirers have tried to find out whether it is actually true (such as Pete Navarro, who is largely responsible for rescuing Dellschau's work). The Atlantic describes it as 'The Amazing Story of an Airship Club That Might Never Have Existed', as though we should be surprised if it had not. But it seems abundantly clear to me that we can in fact say that it pretty much definitely never existed. There is no evidence for the Sonora Aero Club that does not appear in Dellschau's artwork, but plenty against it elsewhere in the historical record.
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Saturday, 22 March 1913

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

Aberdeen Daily Journal, 22 March 1913, 5

Here's a rarity these days: an actual phantom airship report, from the Aberdeen Daily Journal (p. 5):

About a quarter past nine o'clock on Thursday night [20 March 1913] a 'phantom airship' was seen hovering above Glasgow. To a eye-witness, it appeared at first to be a star of unusual magnitude and brilliance. After watching the object for about ten minutes, however, during which it moved rapidly to the north-west, he was convinced that it was not a star, and, drawing the attention of three other gentlemen, they also observed it for a considerable time, and came to the conclusion that it was an airship of some description. During a period of fifteen minutes it three times disappeared for about two minutes each time, and the watchers formed the opinion that it was being manœuvred in a circular course. Occasionally it appeared to be a balloon with a car underneath, and this impression was strengthened by what seemed to be the rays of a searchlight streaming from the car. At intervals for about three-quarters of an hour the object was plainly visible, and ultimately it disappeared in a northerly direction. The atmosphere was clear, and the gentlemen were satisfied that the moving object was some form of balloon.

No other paper picks up the Glasgow story. The Leitrim Observer, for some reason, sees fit to choose this day to inform its readers that 'the airship scare at Grimsby' has been put to an end by the discovery of a box kite used by hoaxers, though most other newspapers reported this more than two weeks ago (p. 7).
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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.

Friday, 21 March 1913

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

Debate on the Army Estimates continued in the House of Commons yesterday. The Conservatives recovered their composure after Seely's unsettling openness, and set about undermining his reassurances that Britain's aerial defences are in safe hands. Taking the lead was Arthur Lee, a former Army officer and later Civil Lord of the Admiralty. The Times reports that Lee disputed Seely's contention that 'the large airship was not required for military purposes', arguing that 'imperfect as they were [...] they had a radius of action of over 1,200 miles, which would enable them to come from the Continent and cruise all over these islands and return' (p. 8):

They were able to drop a weight approximating one ton, and the moral effect, at any rate, that would be produced in this country when in the throes of mobilization by these vessels cruising over our mobilization centres, dockyards, magazines, and even the House of Commons (laughter) could be easily imagined.

Lee also took Seely to task for his belief that shooting airships down with guns would be quite easy:

The Zeppelins, painted a light grey, were practically invisible against an ordinary grey sky at about 5,000ft. The right hon. gentleman also said that at night they could not see us, but he had been informed that a dockyard working with lights at night made a plainer target than it did in the daytime. (Hear, hear.)

It was at this point that Lee made an oblique reference to phantom airships:

The question was, who was to shoot? And he confessed that he, as an ordinary peaceable citizen, did contemplate with some foreboding the possibility of Territorial artillery being called out for night practice at the planet Venus. (Laughter.)

The Manchester Courier, one of the few other papers to include this passage in their summary of Lee's speech, puts it this way (p. 8):

For his own part, he contemplated with some anxiety the prospect of the Territorials being called out to indulge in night practice at the planet Venus as she hung low on the Western horizon. (Laughter.)

Here he seems to be using the idea of phantom airships to ridicule the Government's aerial navigation regulations, suggesting that they would cause false alarms and possibly endanger the public. There is also probably a criticism here of the Territorials, a Liberal innovation which Conservatives largely discounted in favour of conscription or at least universal military training — Lee was a former officer in the Volunteers, the militia which the Territorials replaced. Still, it's a bit odd to see a Conservative mocking mystery airships; usually that's the Liberal way.

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

Thursday, 20 March 1913

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

Daily Mirror, 20 March 1913, 4

Seely's statement of the Army estimates will have done little to assuage the doubts of Bonar Law and Massy regarding the Government's unsoundness on aviation, since he announced no new expenditure beyond that already announced. However, in its fullness and its frankness it appears to have disarmed the Opposition, at least for now. The part dealing with aviation has attracted the most interest in the press, for as the Dublin Freeman's Journal says, 'Usually the debate on the Army Estimates is the dullest of the year', but this time there was 'scope for the exercise of the imagination. What of the peril of the air?' (p. 7) The Journal's parliamentary correspondent suggests that Seely's speech was intended to puncture the recent hysteria about airships (though this appears to be their own interpretation, not supported by Seely's own words as quoted):

First he explained how the airship panic had been allowed to grow. Both the Admiralty and the War Office had been hard at work, but they have not advertised. Not only so, but he paid a tribute to the Press of the country for assisting them to work in secret.

Briefly, the Army now has 123 trained pilots and 101 aeroplanes, among them 'the most efficient aeroplane in the world'. It 'does not favour the monster airship of the Zeppelin type', but its three small airships 'have the advantage of being portable' and 'can be taken to pieces and sent abroad with an expeditionary force'. Seely went on to say that

The Zeppelin need not be feared. The difficulty of hitting a target in the air, moving at an unknown speed at an unknown height, has been solved completely. Any idea of an airship hovering over a battlefield or over a defenceless country must be abandoned.

Mr. Rowland Hunt tried to come to the rescue of the dumb-founded Opposition. 'How is it to be done at night?' he asked, only to be reminded that if the airship could not be seen it could not see a target to fire at below.

Well might the Opposition have been dumb-founded by such an argument. But Seely's attempt to dispel 'The Fear of the Zeppelin' can only be strengthened by the news from Germany that the military airship Ersatz Z I was wrecked at Karlsruhe yesterday, breaking in two from a gale. According to the Daily Mirror (p. 4; above):

The Ersatz Z 1, the newest Zeppelin airship, adds Reuter, was the ship supposed to have made the surreptitious trip to England about a month ago at the time of the airship 'scare'.

A number of other newspapers include this detail in their report, including the Dundee Courier, the Irish Times, the Liverpool Courier and both the Manchester Courier and the Manchester Guardian.

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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By in 1910s, Australia, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Publications 3 Comments

History Australia, the journal of the Australian Historical Association, has accepted my article 'Dreaming war: airmindedness and the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918' for publication in the August 2013 issue. This is the second time my blogging to conference paper to peer-reviewed article workflow has borne fruit. I stumbled across the scare nearly two years ago, became curious, and started digging in the National Archives of Australia about six months later. Once I was convinced there was something to the topic, I proposed a talk for the AHA's 2012 conference, and when that was accepted started blogging around the material intensively (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). With some help from the AHA/CAL writing workshops, the AHA National Writing Cluster pilot, and of course the article's referees, I can now (well, soon, anyway) say that I'm an Australian historian in both senses of the term!

My plan is to use this article as the foundation for a larger project on mystery aircraft scares. Ultimately this could embrace scares in Australia, Britain (the next and current phase), New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the United States, and maybe even beyond. To do this right will involve archival research and so at least some funding from somewhere. Because there's little existing historiography on mystery aircraft to draw upon, my idea is to use this article to show that the topic is a solid one which is worth further research, and to suggest where I'm going with it. Ideally this project would lead to a book, but even if it doesn't work out that way I'll at least get a few articles out of it. For now, getting an article on the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918 out there is a good start.

Wednesday, 19 March 1913

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

Only one or maybe two references to phantom airships appear in today's papers, both more or less in passing. The Manchester Guardian reports on a speech made by Andrew Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservatives, at Manchester's Free Trade Hall last night, and in so doing made the following sardonic comment (p. 7):

It was not, he assured us, a time for party feeling. [Was] there not a war in the Near East; were not armaments increasing abroad with feverish rapidity; was not our food supply a mere mouthful; were not airships darkening the sky? — certainly it was no time for party feeling; rather was it the time for a Conservative Government without any further delay.

This could be merely a metaphorical allusion to the increase in aerial armaments rather than a reference to actual airships actually darkening the actual sky. The Guardian is of course politically opposed to Bonar Law and so wants to make him seem foolish. In fact the text of his speech, which apparently is given in full, does not refer to airships directly and only has the following on aviation (p. 8):

Now, finally, consider what has happened in regard to aviation. — (Cheers.) I do not profess to be an expert about it, but no one who is following what is happening in the world can doubt that the development of that science has altered the whole strategical position of every country in the world. Nobody knows what the effect of it may be, but nobody can doubt that the effect of it may be to seriously threaten our navy, to seriously endanger our position. This Government beset with their party tactics have ignored this question. They have lagged far behind, and now even if they try, and I doubt if they will try, it may be too late to make up the ground which has so carelessly and so thoughtlessly lost.

Part of the context for Bonar Law's remarks on defence is that 'To-morrow [i.e. today] in the House of Commons there will be a discussion on the state of our army'. This discussion, or rather the debate on Colonel Seely's introduction of this year's Army Estimates, is also the occasion for an article in the Daily Express which rather prejudges matters with its title 'SHALL WE BE BETRAYED?' (p. 4). The author is Colonel H. S. Massy, C.B., F.R.G.S., vice-chairman of the Aerial League. Massy is alarmed because it has already been announced that the Estimates currently provide only 'half a million to aviation, plus a small and not easily ascertainable sum in the Navy vote':

Those of us who are alive to Great Britain's imminent danger of aerial invasion and defeat, still — perforce — cherish hopes that when the Estimates are formally introduced to-day we shall find a large sum forthcoming to supplement the amount already announced. As the last chance of all, surely there must be a supplementary estimate in contemplation!'

Massy says that while £500,000 might be 'well enough for bricks and mortar, even perhaps for pay', to gain 'the unbuyable experience which is the real gap between the German aerial forces and our own [...] will cost us at least a million pounds to acquire'.

The Government may dismiss all this as vague. Yet we have seen Germany's fleets of dirigibles ever growing. We have seen only too clearly that they can, at will, sail over our shores.

Massy was a signatory to the Aerial League's memorial calling for £1 million to be spent on aerial defence which also invoked the mystery airship scare as a justification, but he appears to go further here by asserting that the airships were real and that they were German.

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

Tuesday, 18 March 1913

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

Liverpool Echo, 18 March 1913, 3

The Liberal Daily Chronicle's parliamentary correspondent, as reported in today's Liverpool Echo (above; p. 3), has used the phantom airship scare to attack the Conservative press in the harshest terms, on the basis that they have made the British people look ridiculous in the eyes of Europe:

A distinguished private member [of Parliament], who has just returned from Italy, tells me that he found in various parts of the Continent that an impression very unfavourable to this country had been created by the scare articles in some British newspapers in regard to the so-called mysterious movements of alleged airships. 'These foolish alarmist articles,' said the hon. member in question, 'convey the idea that we have lost our nerve and sangfroid, and our prestige on the Continent suffers accordingly.' The Yellow Press of this country has much to answer for. It is unpatriotic to the core.

This is a bit unfair of Europe, since in recent weeks mystery aircraft have also been seen in (possibly) France, Belgium, Romania, Austria-Hungary, and Germany. Then again, perhaps they didn't become the press sensation in those countries that they did in Britain.

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.

Sunday, 16 March 1913

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

The Observer's aeronautical correspondent, Charles C. Turner, C. Av., appears to be unpersuaded that the phantom airships aren't real (p. 15):

While the rumours of airship visits were discredited and unsupported, it was amusing to follow the elaborate arguments put forward to show how impossible it was for airships to cross the North Sea to Yorkshire. Hard upon these explanations, of course, came the reports of two steamer commanders and their officers, evidence which it is rather difficult to [refuse?]. Some writers omitted the necessary precaution of glancing at a map of Europe: they would have seen that it is no farther from Cuxhaven to Yorkshire than it is from Hamburg to Sheerness, and that the distance is within the compass of the endurance of several German airships. Again, it was assumed by these writers that it was necessary for the whole voyage to be completed during the hours of darkness! But why? And moreover, we now have the evidence of the sea-captains who saw an airship by daylight.

By 'the reports of two steamer commanders and their officers', Turner is presumably referring to the airship sightings from the City of Leeds and the Othello, but these both took place at night, so what 'the evidence of the sea-captains who saw an airship by daylight' might be is not clear.

Supposing there had been an easterly wind of 30 miles per hour on the occasion of one of these visits, and that the speed of the ship was say, 45 miles per hour. That would mean a journey to England completed in, at most, four hours while the home journey would occupy, say, 26 hours. No very difficult performance.

No very easy one, either, though.

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

Saturday, 15 March 1913

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

Aberdeen Daily Journal, 15 March 1913, 5

A few more details have emerged about the mystery airship crash near Caputh in Germany, thanks to the report of the Daily Telegraph's Berlin correspondent (reprinted in the Aberdeen Daily Journal, p. 5; above):

It was shortly after nightfall that two women returned from work in the fields to Caputh, a large village some miles to the west of Potsdam, with a tale that they had seen an airship catch fire and blow up over a vast fir forest that covers the greater part of that district. As they both have a high reputation for intelligence and veracity, and as they described what they had seen with complete unanimity, no one seems to have thought of doubting their word. The close circumstantiality of their narrative was also very convincing. They said the exploded airship was very similar to the Hansa, which has for some time been stationed in Potsdam, and which they had repeatedly seen. The vessel, they stated, had two cars, and while they were watching it a black cloud of smoke suddenly rose from one of these. Then flames appeared, and quickly enveloped the hill of the airship, which began to fall rapidly towards the earth. Just before it reached the tree-tops one of the cars became detached, and the vessel, thus lightened, soared rapidly upwards.

'It was particularly this last detail', the Telegraph's correspondent says, 'which convinced the local authorities that the tale was true'; though since the women had 'repeatedly' seen a real airship in flight it seems quite possibly that they had seen the effects of a ballast dump. It anyway seems quite clear that there was no airship, since none are missing and none were found, and so

the women must have been either the victims of an illusion or the authors of a hoax. The former view seems to be generally taken, and there is a good deal of speculation as to what was the burning object which it is believed they actually did see. One theory is that it was a registering fire balloon, such as was responsible for a good deal of the airship mystification in England; but the most favourite hypothesis appears to be that what they took to be an airship was a military aeroplane, which in reality did pass over Caputh about the time of the vision, en route from Doberitz to Leipzig. It is no uncommon thing for the motors of flying machines to emit considerable quantities of smoke, and the flames are supposed to have been nothing more serious than sparks from the exhaust, which probably looked a little terrifying in the gathering darkness.

As the Telegraph's correspondent notes, recently 'a reward was offered for information that could lead to the arrest of aerial visitors who had been seen cruising about over one of the Eastern provinces', and the Caputh story is 'just as well authenticated, and apparently even more baseless, than those which recently attracted so much attention in England'.
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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 No Comments

James Hinton. The Mass Observers: A History, 1937-1949. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. This is not yet another book of extracts from Mass-Observation diaries (not that there's anything wrong with that) but a history of the organisation itself. Even within the chronological span covered, the focus is on the first five years (i.e. before Tom Harrisson was conscripted and so unable to exercise close control), but then that's when M-O was most active and influential. I only wish it could have been published, say, a year ago…

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