The Australasian Association for European History is, by widespread acclaim, the best conference series ever, and so I’m pleased to report that I will be speaking at the next one, to be held in July at the University of Newcastle. The title of my talk is ‘Zeppelinitis: constructing the German aerial threat to Britain, 1912-16’, […]
At 10:45am on 25 April 2015, a RAAF Hornet (possibly a Super Hornet) flew 500 feet over my house. Ordinarily my response to something like this would be: COOL. But this day was a bit different, because it was, of course, Anzac Day; and not just any Anzac Day, but the long-anticipated centenary of the
For my twelfth (and last?) contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, I spoke about what was undoubtedly the most important battle to take place in late April 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres in Flanders. The reason why this was so important is because it opened with the first successful, large-scale poison
David Payne sent me this great photograph of Malaya XV Cheon Teong, Ngoh Bee, a B.E.2c which was donated to the British war effort as part of the Imperial Aircraft Flotilla I blogged about last year. David’s grandfather, Arthur Chapman, is in the cockpit; he was an engineer at Shorts on the Isle of Sheppey,
In my eleventh contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, I took another look at how the economic war at sea was working out. My particular focus this week was the sinking of the Dutch freighter Medea (above), the first neutral casualty of Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign. I also discussed the difficult position
For my tenth contribution to the Road to War series on ABC New England today, I discussed how the mutual naval blockades between Britain and Germany were becoming more total. In this week in 1915, Britain extended its blockade of Germany; the German unrestricted submarine blockade began to sink greater numbers of ships, including one
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Every so often, Vladimir Putin gets annoyed with NATO and engages in a bit of sabre-rattling, sending a few Tu-95 Bear bombers on long-range flights off the coast of Portugal or Canada in order to remind them that Russia is not to be taken lightly (I happened to be at a conference at a RAF
Today I made my ninth contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, talking about U-boats (AKA ‘the Zeppelins of the sea’) and their advantages and disadvantages in warfare. More specifically, I spoke about the German declaration on 4 February 1915 of unlimited submarine warfare in the seas around Britain, switching from their previous
For my eighth contribution to The Road to War on ABC New England, I spoke about the first Zeppelin raid on Britain, on the night of 19 January 1915; certainly more consequential than the first air raid on Britain as it actually killed people in Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in Norfolk. I talked about
