Debate on the Army Estimates continued in the House of Commons yesterday. The Conservatives recovered their composure after Seely’s unsettling openness, and set about undermining his reassurances that Britain’s aerial defences are in safe hands. Taking the lead was Arthur Lee, a former Army officer and later Civil Lord of the Admiralty. The Times reports […]
Seely’s statement of the Army estimates will have done little to assuage the doubts of Bonar Law and Massy regarding the Government’s unsoundness on aviation, since he announced no new expenditure beyond that already announced. However, in its fullness and its frankness it appears to have disarmed the Opposition, at least for now. The part
History Australia, the journal of the Australian Historical Association, has accepted my article ‘Dreaming war: airmindedness and the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918’ for publication in the August 2013 issue. This is the second time my blogging to conference paper to peer-reviewed article workflow has borne fruit. I stumbled across the scare nearly two
Only one or maybe two references to phantom airships appear in today’s papers, both more or less in passing. The Manchester Guardian reports on a speech made by Andrew Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservatives, at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall last night, and in so doing made the following sardonic comment (p. 7): It
The Liberal Daily Chronicle‘s parliamentary correspondent, as reported in today’s Liverpool Echo (above; p. 3), has used the phantom airship scare to attack the Conservative press in the harshest terms, on the basis that they have made the British people look ridiculous in the eyes of Europe: A distinguished private member [of Parliament], who has
The Observer‘s aeronautical correspondent, Charles C. Turner, C. Av., appears to be unpersuaded that the phantom airships aren’t real (p. 15): While the rumours of airship visits were discredited and unsupported, it was amusing to follow the elaborate arguments put forward to show how impossible it was for airships to cross the North Sea to
A few more details have emerged about the mystery airship crash near Caputh in Germany, thanks to the report of the Daily Telegraph‘s Berlin correspondent (reprinted in the Aberdeen Daily Journal, p. 5; above): It was shortly after nightfall that two women returned from work in the fields to Caputh, a large village some miles
Yesterday’s report of an airship seen crashing in flames near Potsdam in Germany has been picked up by a number of newspapers, including the Aberdeen Daily Journal, the Dundee Courier, the Evening Telegraph, the Liverpool Echo, the Manchester Courier, the Manchester Guardian, the Standard, and the Western Times — most of which don’t say anything
No phantom airships have been seen in the skies over Britain for the better part of a week, but it appears that one may have crashed in, of all places, Germany. The Derby Daily Telegraph carries the following story from Reuter’s in Berlin (p. 3): Eighty chasseurs of the Guards are searching for the remains
There is very little phantom airship news today. The Exeter Western Times reports on the airship seen over London on Friday night (p. 4): An airship hoax has been worked on a London crowd. A smithfield [sic] porter, realising how little a thing will attract a crowd, stood for a few seconds looking intently up
