1910s

The image presents two schematic diagrams of a dugout, labelled "Plan of Dug Out" and "Section A B." The top diagram is a top-down view showing the layout of the dugout, featuring rectangular sections with labelled areas. The entrance steps are on the right, leading to a larger central space with an emergency exit on the left. Arrows indicate the paths and functions within the space. The bottom diagram provides a cross-section view, illustrating the underground structure. It shows layers of earth and stones above the dugout, with a stairway leading down from the ground level. The dugout consists of various compartments, depicted with solid lines and labelled for dimensions.
1910s, Civil defence, Home Fires Burning, Periodicals, Pictures

Spooked

One of the fun things about historical research is finding something when you’re not looking for it. Alan Murdie, in his regular ‘Ghostwatch’ column in a recent Fortean Times, wrote the following: At Folkstone [sic], in 1917, candles in an air-raid shelter were mysteriously extinguished amid other poltergeist events. Natural gas from strata was blamed.1 […]

1910s, Art, Civil defence, Pictures

Images of Great War tube shelters

It’s well known that in the Blitz, London’s Underground stations were used by civilians as ad hoc air raid shelters. Indeed, photos of platforms crowded with huddled people taking cover from the bombs on the surface are iconic and practically the first thing you likely think of when the Blitz is mentioned. (I’m sure you

A peaceful riverside scene with a palm tree in the foreground and a steamship on the river.
1900s, 1910s, Australia, Contemporary, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures

Looking for the mothership

The current drone panic on the eastern US seaboard – which started out in New Jersey about a month ago, but has spread to Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and even US bases in the UK and Germany – is, of course, hardly unprecedented. Not only does it bear obvious similarities to the 2019

In the aftermath of the second German daylight Gotha raid on London, crowds watch as smoke pours from the roof of the Central Telegraph Office, struck by a 100 lb bomb, 7 July 1917
1910s, Books, Pictures, Reviews

First Blitz? – II

In my previous post, I discussed my concerns with the way sources are used in Neil Hanson’s First Blitz.1 Here I turn to the problem of strategy, which goes more to the argument of the book. Again there are two parts to this, one broad and one narrow. I’ll start with the broad. Hanson’s argument

A large biplane Gotha bomber seen from below
1910s, Books, Pictures, Reviews

First Blitz? – I

This is a continuation, of sorts, of my series of posts critiquing the recent trend of describing the air raids on Britain in the First World War as the ‘First Blitz’. I’ve separated it out because, although it is about the best-known book to use that phrase in its title – Neil Hanson’s First Blitz

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