The New Zealand government, despite its lack of a homegrown air arm, was little inclined to get involved in the Imperial Aircraft Flotilla. Even though a local Over-Seas Club president happened to have a seat in Cabinet, official participation was largely confined to forwarding money collected by New Zealand individuals and organisations to the Over-Seas
As of May 1916, the Imperial Aircraft Flotilla consisted of 91 machines purchased with funds donated by Britons overseas, 69 for the RFC and 22 for the RNAS. The RFC donations were organised through the Over-Seas Club — £1500 for a B.E.2c and £2250 for a Vickers F.B.5 — and were as follows.1 The Imperial
We are familiar enough with the Spitfire Funds of the Second World War, in which patriotic individuals and groups could buy aircraft for the nation. There was a fair amount of precedent for this. In the early 1930s, Lady Houston more than once offered the government hundreds of thousands of pounds for air defence, though
With my book’s publication imminent and my return to the job market beginning to, if not loom, then at least creep up, it’s time to think about what’s next in terms of a research programme. I had been thinking of something to do with mystery aircraft, and indeed my next small research project, on scares
Since I’ll be undertaking a research trip to the UK this November or so, I need to think about exactly what I’m going to do there. Giving a paper at the AHA is part of that process. That will hopefully help me formulate my approach or at least identify potential approaches to comparing airship, spy
I’ve just submitted an article for peer review, ‘The airship panic of 1913: the birth of aerial theatre and the British fear of Germany on the eve of the Great War’. I’m not going to say where, since it will likely be rejected and I don’t need to have a public record of my failures!
This cartoon appeared in Flight in 1913.1 It’s entitled ‘In 1950’ with the caption ‘Flitting — by the light of the Easter moon’. Now, ‘flitting’ is a term used in Scotland and the north of England to mean moving house. It is, or at least was, a practice which happened much more often there than
I heard today that my proposed paper for this year’s Australian Historical Association conference has been accepted, so I’ll be going to Brisbane and the University of Queensland in July. (Better winter than summer, the only time of year I’ve been previously, I’m quite sure.) The title and abstract are as follows: Rumours of war:
Getty Images has just announced an embed function, which makes it possible to very easily use images from their collections in blogs and other social media, while simultaneously maintaining Getty Images’ rights and — this is the really nice bit — avoiding the use of unsightly watermarks. This is rightly being greeted with enthusiasm (though
Under the terms of an agreement made in 1909 between the three main British aviation bodies, the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain concentrated on ‘the scientific phases of the movement’, the Aero Club of the United Kingdom was responsible for ‘sporting and social aspects’, and the Aerial League of the British Empire, the one I’m
