Giles MacDonogh. 1938: Hitler's Gamble. London: Constable, 2010. 1938 was a big year for Germany, with the army purge, the Anschluss of Austria, the Sudeten crisis, and Kristallnacht. It seems that the fate of the Jews in Germany (including those parts absorbed in the course of 1938) is given a relatively large amount of attention when compared with the diplomatic machinations that are perhaps more usual in accounts of this year, which is fine because I already own more usual accounts. Also: cheap.
Monthly Archives: February 2013
Friday, 14 February 1913
Yesterday, the Daily Mail said that the Aerial Navigation Bill would be put before the Lords next week. In fact, as today's issue reveals, the bill already 'passed through all its stages in the House of Lords late last night' (p. 5). Moreover, 'all the regulations for the enforcement of the Government's Aerial Navigation Bill [...] have already been drawn up by the Home Office, with the assistance of War Office experts'.
In view of recent circumstances, everything has been hurried forward so that there will not be the least hitch or delay in enforcing the Act, which gives power to the authorities to shoot at sight at any aircraft coming from places outside the United Kingdom whose pilot fails to respond to certain signals. Pilots anxious to sail over our harbours and naval bases will be subject to the most stringent regulations.
The same article also discusses the mystery airships:
We are able to state that in the case of the airship which was reported by The Daily Mail to have been seen sailing above Sheerness on October 14, the authorities have satisfactory proof that this was not one of our own airships but one belonging to a foreign country.
The nature of this proof is not explained, nor is the identity of the airship its origin stated. No reference is made to the claim -- assumed to be officially inspired -- in The Times a month ago that there was reason to believe that the airship responsible was the German civilian airship Hansa. But it seems like this is new information, because that previous report also blamed Hansa for the Dover sighting, whereas the Mail says 'Nothing is certain in regard to the other reported flights'. However, given this 'conclusive proof of the visit of a foreign airship to Sheerness the other reports are naturally considered in a very grave light' (pp. 5-6).
The Mail further reports that, according to the War Office, 'special guns capable of firing at aircraft within a reasonable height are already mounted at various points round the coast' (p. 6). Again, yesterday it had merely said that this would happen at some unspecified point in the future. So things are speeding up.
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Thursday, 13 February 1913
The Aeroplane today suggests that 'The visits of the various "scare-ships" have evidently not been without salutary effect', if they have given rise to the present Aerial Navigation Bill (p. 162). The Daily Mail would tend to agree, but hopes for more. It devotes both its first leading article and nearly a column's worth of articles on the opposite page to the bill and to the mystery airship danger (much of which are reprinted in the Dublin Irish Independent, p. 6, and the Dundee Evening Telegraph, p. 4). To take the Mail's reportage first (p. 5; above):
The Government has awakened to the fact that foreign airships have several times recently appeared over England. The result is that a Government Bill is now being rushed through Parliament to meet the danger.
The operative word here is 'rushed'. The bill was introduced into the House of Commons only on Friday (according to the Mail, but Hansard says Saturday; the text seems to have been published on Friday), but
will be the law of the land before many days have passed. Read for the second time on Monday, its remaining stages in the Commons were passed in a single session. During Tuesday's session it was, in the terse language of the orders of the day, considered in Committee, and reported, without amendment; read the third time, and passed. The Bill will be taken in the House of Lords early next week.
There was practically no discussion in the Commons. The proceedings took place after midnight in the sessions both of Monday and Tuesday [...] Thus a Bill of considerable importance to national defence has been hurried through with hardly a word of discussion. The Opposition were asked, and agreed, not to delay the Bill in any way.
Colonel Seely is reported to have told the Commons that the bill 'is not aimed at the aircraft of any foreign Power, but rather at preventing mischievous persons -- possibly from over-sea [sic] -- from hovering over places where there are combustible stores, to the great inconvenience of the people of this country'. This would not seem to explain the haste with which it has been conducted through to the Lords, unless the scareships are taken in account:
The reasons for this urgency are to be found in the frequent reports published in The Daily Mail, of the appearance of unknown airships over various parts of England.
(Though in fact the reports have not been nearly so frequent in the Mail as they have been in the Standard or the Express.) There then follows a summary of the Sheerness incident from last October (which was thoroughly investigated by the Mail) and eight sentences from yesterday's Times on the more recent airship visits and their presumably unfriendly purpose. The Mail then concludes by revealing that
It is understood that the 'sky guns' for firing at aircraft for which contracts were given some time ago will be stationed round the coast for the purpose of carrying out the new regulations.
Wednesday, 12 February 1913
The Times hasn't been ignoring the phantom airships, but neither has it focused its editorial attention on them -- until now. The third leading article in today's issue is in support of the government's new Aerial Navigation Bill, arguing that 'This strengthening of existing legislative powers can hardly be thought premature, and may indeed be regarded as somewhat belated' (p. 7; above). The Times thinks the mystery airships are real, and it also thinks they are hostile.
It must have occurred to many people that the visits of foreign airships are becoming unpleasantly frequent, especially in view of the fact that we have no means of returning the compliment. They have a way of appearing over our ports just after nightfall or before dawn, coming no one knows whence and going no one knows whither. It would seem that either they have a predilection in favour of following our coastline, or they pass unnoticed, possibly at a greater height, across our territory. During the last four or five months they have been seen over Sheerness, Portsmouth, Dover, Liverpool, and on two separate occasions over Cardiff. Their course has never been traced. They are sighted at a given spot and then they disappear. That circumstance not only gives a surreptitious air to their visits, but raises an unpleasant suspicion that these visits may be more frequent than we know.
It then goes on to explain the threat posed by these mystery airships:
This aerial espionage of unknown extent and minuteness is an intrusion which we have a right to resent. Its motives are not likely to be friendly, nor can we flatter ourselves that the beauty of a bird's-eye view of our ports is so great as to lead foreigners to spend so much money in order to derive æsthetic gratification from it. Airships are already capable of being used to do a great deal of mischief, and their powers in this respect will certainly be extended. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the possibility of using such powers has entered into the calculations of some foreign country, it is obvious that this reconnoitring in time of peace might be found of great utility should an occasion arise.
The Times rejects the notion that there exists a freedom of the air as there does a freedom of the seas: 'The analogy of the sea is no analogy at all. A ship on the high seas cannot drop explosives into our arsenals, but an aircraft can'. Moreover, even on the high seas every ship 'has to display her name and to carry papers showing her movements, her registry, her nationality, and so forth. There is no analogy between ships and these aerial visitors to our ports'.
Our sovereignty goes up to the sky and down to the centre. In the past it has not been necessary to say so because no one had the means to challenge our dominion or to invade our atmosphere without first conquering our soil. The means of attacking us through and by the air now exist. It is therefore our business to define our rights and to make it plain that the air above us is our own, subject, like our soil and our territorial waters, to whatever municipal regulations we find it expedient to make.
And not only is legislation along the lines of the Aerial Navigation Bill necessary, but 'we also need an aerial police to enforce our regulations, in addition to whatever means we already possess'.
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The many minutes of the Royal Aero Club
In May 1909, the three major organisations promoting aviation in Britain, the Aeronautical Society, the Aero Club, and the newly-formed Aerial League, announced that they would henceforth coordinate their efforts. The Aerial League would be recognised as 'the paramount body for patriotic movements and for education', the Aeronautical Society 'the paramount scientific authority on aeronautical matters', and the Aero Club 'the paramount body in all matters of sport, and the development of the art of aeronautics' (Flight, 8 May 1909, 258.) These are important organisations in the history of British aviation. I've visited the Aeronautical Society (now the Royal Aeronautical Society), to use their library (now part of the National Aerospace Library) and I've visited the Aerial League (now the Air League), to examine its archives, but I've never been to the Aero Club (now the Royal Aero Club), to see what it has. And now I don't have to; or at least soon I won't have to. (Though, actually, most of the material is in the RAF Museum London's collections, which I have visited for other reasons.)
Andrew Dawrant has left a comment on my post about Claude Grahame-White which brought to my attention the existence of the Royal Aero Club Collection. The Collection exists to preserve and promote the Aero Club's historical material, whether generated by itself or donated to it, including photographs and postcards, fine art, and trophies and other artefacts. (The Aviators' Certificates, i.e. pilot's licenses, which were awarded by the Aero Club are available through Ancestry, alas not for free.) But what really caught my eye is the digitisation programme. In the future this will include the Aero Club's papers (an index is already available). Moreover, the minutes of the Aero Club's executive committee from 1901 (i.e. the beginning) to 1956 have been scanned, OCRed and put online. Admittedly (as I know from looking at the equivalent Air League records) it is in the nature of minutes that they generally record only resolutions proposed, resolutions voted, letters read at the meeting, and not the cut and thrust of the discussion and debate. And as agendas were set in advance (and members no doubt wanted to get off home), they are often oddly silent on the great matters of the day, even when they would seem to be of direct relevance. But even so there is a tremendous amount of information to be gleaned from them, even just on a basic level of who knew who and did what when.
This is a great resource and I thank the Royal Aero Club for making it available and accessible to the public free of charge.
Tuesday, 11 February 1913
There is little overt mention of phantom airships in today's newspapers, but quite a few allusions. They all accompany the news, published in all the major papers, that last night the Secretary for War, Colonel Seely, introduced to the House of Commons an Aerial Navigation Bill to amend the 1911 Aerial Navigation Act. The bill would enable, in the words of the Daily Mail (p. 3; above), 'the restriction, if necessary, of flights by foreign aircraft over this country':
The Bill gives a Secretary of State powers to prohibit aircraft from flying over prescribed areas, which may include the whole of the coast-line and the 'territorial waters (i.e. within three miles of the coast) adjacent thereto.'
If an aircraft flies over a prescribed area or fails to comply with the landing conditions a signal shall be given by 'the officer designated for the purpose.' Then if the aircraft still fails to comply 'it shall be lawful for the officer to fire at or into such aircraft and to use any and every other means necessary to compel compliance.'
As it stands, the 1911 Act provides only for a £200 fine or imprisonment for 6 months (or both) for aviators caught flying over a prohibited area. Therefore, if passed, the Aerial Navigation Bill will for the first time give the government the legal basis for air defence.
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Monday, 10 February 1913
Any provincial newspaper with pretensions to quality features a regular column from its (usually anonymous) London correspondent which offers a mixture of political gossip and analysis as well as anecdotes of life in the capital and other, less classifiable tidbits. Today's 'Our London correspondence' column in the Manchester Guardian, for example, previews the coming week in Parliament, analyses religious demographics in Londonderry, and discusses the 'new terror' of taxi whistles on London streets (p. 6). It also has two paragraphs on 'The mysterious airship', based on a conversation with 'a friend who watches the progress of aeronautics very closely'. It seems that
people of his sort are inclined to take the reports of the airship that travels by night seriously, and to hold that, though two or three of them (I am afraid the Manchester report is one) seem to be the product of self-deception, there is now a strong enough body of evidence to make it reasonably certain that in the course of the last two months an airship travelling by night has been seen at Sheppey, at Dover, and at different points on the Welsh coast of the Bristol Channel.
The Guardian's correspondent seems to doubt the claim that the Dover airship was the privately-owned Hansa: 'but I believe this theory was arrived at by a process of elimination, the movements of the German Government airships having been traced on the night in question'. As to 'the theory in Wales [...] that the vessel belongs to some experimenter living on the Devonshire moors',
It seems important to observe that the direction in which the 'mystery' vessel was moving and the places at which it was seen would point even more cogently to experiments conducted from Salisbury Plain. It may be added that, though a private experimenter who only flew at night would be a lunatic, there might be a very definite purpose in keeping quiet by day if the experimenter were a Government department. I learn from my friend that there is much comment on the darkness which has fallen on the Government's experiments in regard to dirigibles of the rigid type since the unfortunate accident to the naval airship No. 1 at Barrow two years ago. This year's Estimates will probably contain provision for new and slightly smaller vessels of this type. Is it possible that something has been accomplished already?
This is in line with earlier, vaguer hints in the Guardian that government or government-commissioned airships might have been responsible for the South Wales sightings, but the definite suggestion that it is a secret new government (presumably military) airship operating from Salisbury Plain appears to be new.
There follows a brief recollection of the 1909 airship scare, under the heading 'A precedent for sceptics':
Sceptics may comfort themselves by remembering that it was in South Wales not so very long ago that chance and the romantic imagination of a nocturnal wanderer combined to perpetrate the great airship hoax. The wanderer told the story, and chance produced the little tag printed in French which, when first translated, seemed to refer obscurely to shrapnel shell, but was ultimately found to be a very lucid piece of instruction in the use of motor-tyre valves. Such as the inferences to which the technical terms of a foreign tongue may lead the imagination.
A striking phrase that, 'the great airship hoax'. However, while this account is accurate as far as it goes, it is misleading in its implication that C. Lethbridge's strange encounter on Caerphilly Mountain was the cause of the scare, when it actually came at the peak, after a build-up of a week or more. It was more the cause of the end of the scare, as the sudden deflation of the sensational story contributed to a more general scepticism about the phantom airships.
Saturday, 8 February 1913
Two new airship reports today. First, from the Liverpool Echo (p. 6, above):
Between eight and half-past eight last night [7 February 1913] at least a dozen people in London-road, Northwich, observed a bright light in the sky, and were emphatically convinced that it proceeded from an airship. Rays seemed distinctly to emanate from the light, which shifted its position and shone steadily for possibly two minutes. It was observed later at an even higher altitude and smaller in size, the rays being still discernible. The light was intermittent and apparently shifting.
The airship disappeared in the direction of Crewe. It was at a great height, and no outline of the ship was observed. The gale was blowing at the time.
Second, from the Norfolk News (p. 11):
The sight of three aeroplanes was reported from Sheringham on Friday [7 February 1913]. From what we have ascertained, a lady living on the Beeston Hills, looking inland over Hook's Hill, to the back of the town, about six o'clock, saw first one, then a second, and near-by a third aeroplane, going in a westerly direction. From one a red light was flashed over the town. Another lady who was walking in High Street about the same hour noticed a brilliant light from above.
Another paragraph notes the results of 'Further enquiries':
Several residents confirm the truth of the report; and an ex-Army officer observed the last one through his [field] glasses. It now appears that they returned about midnight, and one gentleman distinctly heard them at that hour.
These reports have some unique features. The Northwich sighting took place in the teeth of a gale which caused havoc around Liverpool that night, not the best time to be taking a voyage in an airship. (Though it should be noted that the wind was blowing 'half a gale' during the Dover incident a month ago.) And the Sheringham sighting was of not one but three airships (or aeroplanes); hitherto the fly-by-nights have always been solitary.
Friday, 7 February 1913
The provincial press is still catching up with the South Wales mystery airships today. In fact, most of it still catching with from the sightings from the weekend -- the Exeter Western Times (p. 6) and Lichfield Mercury (p. 2) have versions of the article published in the Standard on Monday about the airship seen the Vaff Valley on Saturday night, and the Cambridge Independent Press (p. 5) has a truncated account. The Yeovil Western Gazette (p. 2, above) and the Manchester Courier supplement (p. 8) report on the airship seen from Newport and elsewhere on Wednesday night. None provide any additional information beyond that previously published. The Western Times and the Lichfield Mercury air the theory that the airship originated from the wilds of Dartmoor Irish Independent; similarly, the regular London correspondent of the Irish Times says (p. 6), apropos of nothing, that
The mystery regarding the airship so frequently seen over Wales is still unexplained, but it is supposed that experiments are being made with airships from a quiet place on Dartmoor.
The Dundee Evening Telegraph has another idea (p. 5):
Just now Venus appears as the evening star, and, remarked an official of the Royal Astronomical Society it is more likely than not that the bright light of the planet has deceived several people, though, of course, an experienced eye would not now be led astray.
'Venus at present becomes visible about sunset, and remains visible for some hours afterwards,' added the official, 'providing, of course, that there is a clear sky. It would appear to be practically stationary, and, no doubt, people not very well versed in the movements of the planet might think it had some connection with an airship, especially now that many vague rumours are afloat.'
The Western Gazette (p 2.) reprints the Daily Mail similar (though not at all detailed) suggestion of yesterday, so it seems that this explanation is gaining ground.
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Thursday, 6 February 1913
Today is another big day for phantom airships in terms of press coverage. They are mentioned in at least four big London dailies as well as two major and three minor provincial dailies. The reason is yet another airship report from South Wales, where it was seen by many people last people. How many? Well, 'thousands', according to the Daily Express (p. 5) and the Standard (p. 8); 'large numbers', according the Daily Mail (p. 3); 'Many', according to the Manchester Guardian; and 'Numerous', according to The Times (p. 12), the Edinburgh Scotsman, the Dundee Courier (okay -- 'numerous'; p. 4), and the Manchester Courier (p. 7). Whatever the precise figure, it would appear to be a dramatic increase over the numbers of witnesses previously involved. But that then makes the failure of any of the newspaper reports to name a witness or provide a detailed account all the more frustrating.
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