Karl Baedeker. Great Britain: Handbook for Travellers. Old House, 2013 [1937]. As I said, I’m a sucker for facsimile editions, and this one has many nice foldout maps. As the cover doesn’t fail to tell you, this is the version supposedly used by the Luftwaffe to plan the Baedeker raids. At any rate, if you […]
C. G. G. [C. G. Grey], ‘A real aerial defence’, Aeroplane, 12 June 1913, 670: It has been brought to our attention — it comes from the City, so it must be true — that Britain has at last acquired a real means of enforcing the Aerial Navigation Act. It is alleged that a great
Bradshaw’s International Air Guide. Oxford and New York: Old House, 2013 [1934]. I’m a sucker for facsimile reproductions like this. Bradshaw’s are best known for their compilations of [added: railway] timetables for the Continental traveller, but beginning in 1934 they did the same for air routes. You also get airport information, hotel advertisements, standard air
I have previously outlined evidence from the New Zealand press for mystery aeroplane sightings in that country in 1918. I think it is clear that the reports, though not great in number, did amount to a scare. Apart from the claims themselves, and the associated talk of aerial or naval bombardment of New Zealand’s major
Picked up both of these at the Shrine of Remembrance, while visiting to see the new Bomber Command exhibition. Of which, more another day. Don Charlwood. Journeys into Night. Warrandyte: Burgewood Books, 2013 [1991]. I discussed Charlwood’s memoir of the war recently; this is a sort of collective memoir of the twenty men who formed
Talk in the New Zealand press of mystery aeroplanes and the German threat died down by the beginning of May 1918. At the end of the month, though, mystery aeroplanes returned, followed a few weeks later by the German threat — albeit both in a more muted fashion. At Greymouth (on the west coast of
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History.] Above is a poster printed in Australia during the First World War. It very strikingly shows a Zeppelin caught in searchlights (with an aeroplane just visible at the top) over what looks like a town nestled in a valley beside a river. The text reads: ZEPPELINS OVER YOUR TOWN
It’s quite a small world tour, admittedly, but two gigs in two countries just qualifies, I think. Little to no moshing is expected. First, I will be giving a paper at the Empire in Peril: Invasion-scares and Popular Politics In Britain 1890-1914 workshop, which is being held at Queen Mary University of London on 14
Cyril Power, Air Raid (1935): British biplanes tangling with an unidentified enemy against a smoke-filled sky. It is tempting, given the date, to see this as an air raid of the next war, especially given Power’s marked interest in machines and speed and influence by Futurism and Vorticism. But it could just as well be
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] In Giulio Douhet and the Foundations of Air-Power Strategy, Thomas Hippler describes what he calls Douhet’s ‘ahistorical historicism’: His thinking is ahistorical to the extent that it poses a concept of history (‘everything has changed’) that simultaneously cuts off history itself. His thinking is historicist, because this absolute
