A few weeks ago I went along to the biennial RAAF Museum Pageant. The RAAF is, of course, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the RAAF Museum is at Point Cook, on the outskirts of Melbourne. Despite being relatively nearby I've never been, so when fellow aviation blogger JDK (who volunteers at the Museum) suggested the Pageant would be worth going along to I took his advice. And it was good advice too!
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In February 1912, the International Arbitration League issued 'A Memorial Against the Use of Armed Airships', an early proposal for arms control. The memorial claimed that 'For the first time, in the face of a new development of the arts of fighting, nations possess both the conscience and the machinery necessary to check that development effectually'. The new development was the military aeroplane, which had first been used as a weapon only three months before, by the Italians against Turkish forces in Libya. The great powers were starting to form their first tiny air forces: Britain's Air Battalion was formed in April 1911.
It's not clear exactly what the League was proposing; it seems to have been a moratorium on military aircraft. The arguments it gave display a curious mixture of insight and naivety:
There are many who believe that aerial warfare, by reason of its sheer horror, must prove a blessing in disguise, frightening men from war. To those we say: Civilisation does not sanction the ravages of a new and arrestable form of disease, in order that men through horror may be the more eager to join hands in stamping out all forms of sickness. And further, you under-rate the fortitude and adaptability of human nature, which has long proved that it can endure all forms of terror.
There are some who insist that the art of flying will never reach full development without the stimulus of war. To such we suggest that the story of mankind does not leave us without hope that where there is demand, even when only for the purposes of peaceful life, there will also be supply. If the art of flying be delayed a few years by the resolve of men to use that art for mutual help, and not for mutual destruction, the world will be no loser.
There are many who argue that because men fight on earth and water, they may just as well fight in the air. To these we answer: There has never yet been a moment when it was practically possible to ban the war machines of earth or water. There is a moment when it is practically possible to ban those of the air. That moment is now -- before the use of these machines is proved; before great vested interests have formed.1
Some two hundred British intellectuals -- artists, writers, clergy, scientists (all men, I might add) -- signed up to the memorial, including Wilfred Scawen Blunt, J. B. Bury, Walter Crane, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edward Elgar, John Galsworthy, H. Rider Haggard, Thomas Hardy, Frederic Harrison, H. H. Henson, J. A. Hobson, Jerome K. Jerome, Ray Lankester, Lord Lister (who died only a few days later), Oliver Lodge, John Masefield, Gilbert Murray, William Osler, Arthur Pinero, A. F. Pollard, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Joseph Rowntree, Seebohm Rowntree, William Rossetti, William Temple, Alfred Russel Wallace and (of course) H. G. Wells.
An impressive list. In response, Flight had only an anonymous prehistoric skeleton recently unearthed in Norfolk, about which it spun a tale of wise elders begging the inventor of the stone ax to destroy his new weapon 'in the name of humanity'. The point was that the International Arbitration League and the two hundred intellectuals had not taken human nature into account.
Without going quite so far as to say that man's natural instincts lead him to murder, and the appropriation of those things which are not his, whether we regard man as an individual or as a community, the real cause is not very far removed from this. Until all this is changed -- until, that is, human nature has undergone a complete change -- "memorials of protest" against armaments at large and the components of which they consist, are merely in the nature of pious resolutions which do no one any harm if they achieve little good.2
'A Memorial Against the Use of Armed Airships' seems to have had little effect; even the Manchester Guardian, which as a Radical newspaper ought to have been sympathetic, thought the International Arbitration League was on a hiding to nothing.3 Its best chance came twenty years later, when the World Disarmament Conference did consider banning bombers or limiting their use, but the various proposals collapsed as each delegation guarded its own national interest. In other words, because of human nature writ large. The skeleton from Norfolk was right.
John Hersey. Hiroshima. London: Penguin, 2001 [1946]. One of the most important pieces of journalism of the 20th century; with a new final chapter written by Hersey four decades later. I'm teaching Hiroshima mon amour again this semester and so this might be useful preparation.
Robert A. Pape. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. One of those books everyone cites but I haven't read yet. More operational analysis-type stuff than pure history. Concentrates on the Second World War (offensives against Germany and Japan), Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War, but has an interesting appendix discussing other attempts at coercive strategic bombing, from the Gotha raids on.
Harry Houdini is still famous as a magician and escapologist, but he was also a pioneer aviator. One hundred years ago today, on 18 March 1910, he carried out the first powered, controlled flight in Australia, at Diggers Rest, near Melbourne. This testimonial from witnesses appeared in the Melbourne Argus, 19 March 1910, 18:
To Whom It May Concern.
Diggers' Rest,
near Melbourne,
18/3/1910.We, the undersigned, do hereby testify to the fact that on the above date, about 8 o'clock a.m., we witnessed Harry Houdini in a Voisin biplane (a French heavier than air machine) make three successful flights of from 1min. to 3½min., the last flight being of the lastmentioned duration. In his various flights he reached an altitude of 100ft., and in his longest flight traversed a distance of more than two miles.
(Signed)
HAROLD J. JAGELMAN, Kogarah, N.S.W.
ROBERT HOWIE, Diggers' Rest.
A. BRASSAC, Paris.
WALTER P. SMITH, 4 Blackwood-street, North Melbourne.
F. ENFIELD SMITHELLS, care of Union Bank, Melbourne.
RALPH C. BANKS, Melbourne, motor garage.
FRANZ KUKOL, Vienna.
V. L. VICKERY, Highgate, England.
JOHN H. JORDAN, 11 Francis-street, Ascot-vale.
Houdini was on a tour of Australia, and the flight was undertaken to generate publicity for him. But it wasn't undertaken on a whim: he bought and flew the Voisin in Germany the previous year, and had it crated up and shipped out to Australia.
This film shows Houdini on a later flight over Sydney, probably from Rosehill Racecourse. (My first YouTube upload; I took it from Hargrave.) After leaving Australia, he never flew again.
As with any aviation first, there are other claimants for the title of first to fly in Australia. Colin Defries, for example, demonstrated powered flight, but not controlled flight, in Sydney on 9 December 1909: he got up into the air but crashed it. Defries was British; the first Australian to fly (and in an Australian-built aeroplane too) was John Robertson Duigan, later in 1910. David Crotty, a curator at Museum Victoria, discusses some of these issues here; Scienceworks has just opened a new exhibition featuring some artifacts from Defries' aeroplane (its engine was dumped into Port Phillip Bay to avoid import duty!)
I tend to favour Houdini's claims, but that may be because Diggers Rest was my first hometown :) Celebrations are being held there this week -- the Festival of Flight -- including flying displays and (appropriately) magic shows.
I've finally run out of photos from last year's trip to the UK -- well, almost! Here are some miscellaneous shots which didn't make it into the previous posts.
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The following letter appeared in the Evening News, 13 12 March 1935, 6:
On the brick wall at the side of our street door can still be seen faintly two large letters, "P. P.," which stood for Poplar Patrol. Every Friday night it was my job to collect 3d. from each house-hold that belonged to the "P.P." This paid for rent, fire and refreshments for our small front room, where three men, each in his turn, used to sit up every night.
In the event of a raid, as soon as they got the first warning they used to run and knock on every door where there was "P.P."
-- From Mrs. G. Stillwell, 9, Finnymore-road, Dagenham, Essex
Air-raid alerts in the First World War were highly variable in both form and usefulness: depending on the time and the place, they might include Boy Scout buglers, police cyclists wearing signs saying 'TAKE COVER', or maroons which sounded something like bombs going off. Government authorities dithered over whether it was even advisable to give warnings, since they could lead to unnecessary anxiety and (perhaps more importantly) lost sleep. So it was possible for civilians to not know there was an air-raid alert on at all, particularly if they were already asleep. I assume this was the reason for the Poplar Patrol: any family concerned about being caught in their beds when the Zeppelins or Gothas came could subscribe their 3d. a week and be assured of a loud knock on the door, whatever the government was or wasn't doing that week.
I think Samuel Smiles would have approved of this form of community self-help. On the other hand, it might be hard luck for those who didn't (or couldn't) pay up, if a bomb fell in their street. I wonder if voluntary civil defence schemes like this created local schisms between the ins and the outs, as the more inclusive (but still mostly voluntary) air-raid precautions of the 1930s and 1940s did to a degree.
A minor question: why 'Poplar'? Poplar and Dagenham are both in east London, but aren't particularly close to each other. In fact, Dagenham wasn't considered part of London until 1926. My guess is that it is a reference to the shocking tragedy of the Upper North Street School in Poplar, which was hit by a Gotha's bomb on 13 June 1917. Eighteen children were killed, including sixteen 5- and 6-year olds. For a long time, the Poplar infants school symbolised the horrors of the new warfare, just as Guernica did after 1937.
On the last night of January 1916, a large force of seven Zeppelins crossed over the Wash into Norfolk, heading for the industrial cities of the Midlands. Unsure of their location, most of them instead dropped their bombs on relatively unimportant targets. But at least they got home okay. The defending aircraft of the RFC and RNAS had an awful night: 22 sorties resulted in six aircraft being written off, two squadron commanders killed and no contacts with the enemy.
Or at least ... no confirmed contacts with the enemy. Four pilots did report seeing something, but they were well to the south of the probable Zeppelin flightpaths, over London and Essex, and so their reports were dismissed by those higher-up as mistaken identities, phantom airships. At 7.40pm, Lieutenant R. S. Maxwell saw 'an artificial light' north of his B.E.2c while 10000 feet above London, and gave chase before losing it in clouds. 2nd Lieutenant C. A. Ridley, another B.E.2c pilot, also saw a 'moving light' over London at about the same time, and so they may have actually seen each other. Later in the night, at around 9pm, Flight Sub-Lieutenant H. McClelland (also flying a B.E.2c) also thought he saw 'a Zeppelin' by searchlight over London.
Strangest of all was the report of Flight Sub-Lieutenant J. E. Morgan, an RNAS pilot who sortied in his B.E.2c from Rochford in Essex at about a quarter to nine. At 5000 feet, slightly above and to starboard, he spotted
a row of what appeared to be lighted windows which looked something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn.
(This is apparently a quote from Morgan's after-action report.) Thinking that this was a Zeppelin only a hundred feet away -- and presumably having no time to maneuver for a better shot -- he fired his Webley at it! It then seemed that 'the lights alongside rose rapidly' and disappeared. Morgan then started looking for somewhere to land: he saw some lights below which he thought was Southend Pier but turned out to be a Dutch steamer off Thameshaven. He managed to put down safely and flew back to Rochford the following day.
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This is Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, on the morning of 8 March 1918, after it had been hit by a 1-ton bomb dropped by a Giant bomber the night before -- one of the largest to fall on London during the First World War and the most materially destructive. Twelve people were killed (including Lena Ford, who wrote the words to the song "Keep the home fires burning"). It was the first air raid to come in the dark of the moon and, fortunately, the second-last of the war.
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The day after the Shuttleworth Collection visit, Trevor again kindly offered his services as chauffeur and guide, this time to Imperial War Museum Duxford. I'd only been to IWM London on my first visit to London; since IWM Duxford has a specific aviation focus I was keen to rectify its omission!
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