The Daily Mirror has a curious item today under the headline ‘BRITAIN’S PERIL IN THE AIR’ (p. 5; above). It is apparently a statement made yesterday by an unidentified ‘famous naval tactician’, but instead of setting it out as an article or a letter to the editor it is given as an extended quotation with […]
The Aerial Navigation Bill, introduced into the House of Commons only a week ago, is now the Aerial Navigation Act, 1913, as the Daily Mail records (p. 5; above): The Aerial Navigation Bill received the Royal Assent yesterday and comes into operation at once. Foreign airships will now cross England at their peril unless their
Yesterday, the Daily Mail said that the Aerial Navigation Bill would be put before the Lords next week. In fact, as today’s issue reveals, the bill already ‘passed through all its stages in the House of Lords late last night‘ (p. 5). Moreover, ‘all the regulations for the enforcement of the Government’s Aerial Navigation Bill
The Aeroplane today suggests that ‘The visits of the various “scare-ships” have evidently not been without salutary effect’, if they have given rise to the present Aerial Navigation Bill (p. 162). The Daily Mail would tend to agree, but hopes for more. It devotes both its first leading article and nearly a column’s worth of
The Times hasn’t been ignoring the phantom airships, but neither has it focused its editorial attention on them — until now. The third leading article in today’s issue is in support of the government’s new Aerial Navigation Bill, arguing that ‘This strengthening of existing legislative powers can hardly be thought premature, and may indeed be
In May 1909, the three major organisations promoting aviation in Britain, the Aeronautical Society, the Aero Club, and the newly-formed Aerial League, announced that they would henceforth coordinate their efforts. The Aerial League would be recognised as ‘the paramount body for patriotic movements and for education’, the Aeronautical Society ‘the paramount scientific authority on aeronautical
There is little overt mention of phantom airships in today’s newspapers, but quite a few allusions. They all accompany the news, published in all the major papers, that last night the Secretary for War, Colonel Seely, introduced to the House of Commons an Aerial Navigation Bill to amend the 1911 Aerial Navigation Act. The bill
Any provincial newspaper with pretensions to quality features a regular column from its (usually anonymous) London correspondent which offers a mixture of political gossip and analysis as well as anecdotes of life in the capital and other, less classifiable tidbits. Today’s ‘Our London correspondence’ column in the Manchester Guardian, for example, previews the coming week
Two new airship reports today. First, from the Liverpool Echo (p. 6, above): Between eight and half-past eight last night [7 February 1913] at least a dozen people in London-road, Northwich, observed a bright light in the sky, and were emphatically convinced that it proceeded from an airship. Rays seemed distinctly to emanate from the
The provincial press is still catching up with the South Wales mystery airships today. In fact, most of it still catching with from the sightings from the weekend — the Exeter Western Times (p. 6) and Lichfield Mercury (p. 2) have versions of the article published in the Standard on Monday about the airship seen
