Martin van Creveld. The Age of Airpower. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. A history of airpower for the 21st century — there’s about twice as much space devoted to small wars and counterinsurgency as there is to the Second World War. Presentism or rebalancing? Barrett Tillman. Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945. New York: Simon […]
This photo appeared on the front page of the Sunday Express on 6 October 1940, a month into the Blitz. A caption explained, or rather asked: WHO PUT UP THIS POSTER? This mystery poster has appeared in the streets of London. It is about six feet high and ten or twelve feet across, and bears
I noted in a previous post that the debate about reprisal air raids during the First World War largely revolved around two questions: are reprisals moral? and are reprisals effective? The same was true in the Second World War. Taking the question of effectiveness, how this was answered by participants in the debate depended partly
In May 1941, after nine months of German bombing and the evacuation of yet another British army from Europe, the Daily Mirror printed a fascinating little piece of futurism, in the form of a letter written as though it was May 1944, with Britain victorious and Germany prostrate. The headline itself gives some idea of
Herbert Best. The Twenty-fifth Hour. London: Jonathan Cape, 1940. This must have been about the last flowering of that forgotten genre, the knock-out blow novel. More than that, it’s an example of the exceptionally rare post-apocalyptic sub-genre, as it is set years after the end of civilisation and portrays the grim struggle for survival among
But sometimes, it rhymes. The above map, accompanying an article entitled ‘BOMB THESE TEN TOWNS!’, was published on page 4 of the Daily Mirror on 29 August 1940. It rhymes with this map published in the Daily Mail twenty-three years before:
Previously, I identified a comparison between the reprisals debate in the First World War and the reprisals debate during the Blitz as something I could do that previous writers have not (except in passing, or implicitly). I won’t have time in my AAEH paper for a full-blown comparative approach, or for that matter time before
On 23 April 1918, this brief article, filed from Melbourne, was the lead story in a number of Australian newspapers: Within the past 48 hours information has come to hand which points to the probability that the realities of war will soon be brought before Australians in a most convincing fashion. Steps have been taken
At the end of March 1918, the NSW Minister for Education, Augustus James, gave a speech at North Sydney Boys’ High School’s prize day. No doubt with an eye on the press, he spoke rather gloomily about the war situation, especially in light of the continuing German offensive on the Western Front: “We know to-day,”
I have an article in the May 2011 issue of Flightpath, an Australian warbirds magazine. It’s on one of my pet interests, the fear of the commercial bomber between the wars. James Kightly, who will be familiar to regular commenters here as JDK, contributes a complementary look at the reality of transport-bomber conversions. There are
