Press coverage of the phantom airships has so far been somewhat scattershot, with articles in only two or three newspapers on any given day. Today, however, at least eight newspapers report on an airship seen at Cardiff, five of them London dailies (all politically conservative, as it happens) — though admittedly it is not given […]
Two columnists in today’s issue of Flight mention the airship mystery. Oiseau Bleu (‘Bluebird’), the pseudonymous author of ‘Eddies’, a regular commentary on aviation matters, is ‘wondering whether the mysterious Dover “aircraft” after all is found in the suggestion that the noises were due to a motor boat’, p. 71. This appears to be the
John Gooch. Mussolini and his Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy, 1922-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. A big book for a big subject. There’s a lot here on strategic debates and policy within the Fascist regime; not just how the military served Italian foreign policy ends in Spain and Abyssinia but also
There is nothing about phantom airships in the papers today. However, the Daily Mirror has a very brief note about the strange light seen near Ballybay in Ireland. It adds very little but does say, p.4, that the ‘mysterious light […] is keeping the inhabitants of Ballybay, Co. Monaghan, in their homes at night-time as
The Devon and Exeter Gazette today reprints The Times‘s paragraph from yesterday suggesting that the Hansa was responsible for the airship sightings at Sheerness and Dover. It also adds, p. 11, an interpretative gloss from the Globe on this ‘matter which has already attracted considerable public attention, has been the subject of several questions in
The Daily Express today features, p. 6, an article with the title ‘Air ships and scare ships’, written by C. G. Grey, editor of The Aeroplane. Grey has been given a full column immediately following the leading articles to make his case that whatever else they may be, the phantom airships are good news. He
The Dublin Irish Times has a report (p. 9; above) of a ‘mysterious airship’ seen on last Wednesday, 8 January 1913, at Newport, Co. Mayo, on the northwest coast of Ireland. It was first seen at 6.40pm to the southwest, and looked ‘at first’ like ‘a very large, bright star’. It shortly ‘was seen to
A number of newspapers print articles of varying length about the Dover airship mystery today, including the Yeovil Western Gazette, the Exeter Western Times, and the Lichfield Mercury. None of these add any new information about this incident, one being a reprint of an article already published in another newspaper and the other two simply
Alluding to the airship supposedly seen at Dover (assuming Saturday is meant, rather than Sunday as written), the Devon and Exeter Gazette notes (p. 4; above) that ‘similar lights have been seen on the Somerset coast line of the Bristol Channel during the last three or four weeks’ (so going back to mid-December 1912, at
The Times (p. 6; above) has two paragraphs about the reported visit of an unknown flying machine to Dover at about 5am on Saturday morning, 4 January 1913, evidently coming from the direction of the Continent and heading north-east. It was seen by John Hobbs, a corporation employee (i.e. a council worker), though he heard
