In England and the Aeroplane, David Edgerton made the following striking, and oft-cited, point about Britain’s aerial strength at the outbreak of the First World War: Overall, England had fewer aircraft than the other great powers. The total of 113 compares with 120 for France, 232 for Germany, 226 for Russia and 36 for Austro-Hungary. […]
In February 1912, the International Arbitration League issued ‘A Memorial Against the Use of Armed Airships‘, an early proposal for arms control. The memorial claimed that ‘For the first time, in the face of a new development of the arts of fighting, nations possess both the conscience and the machinery necessary to check that development
Harry Houdini is still famous as a magician and escapologist, but he was also a pioneer aviator. One hundred years ago today, on 18 March 1910, he carried out the first powered, controlled flight in Australia, at Diggers Rest, near Melbourne. This testimonial from witnesses appeared in the Melbourne Argus, 19 March 1910, 18: To
The following letter appeared in the Evening News, 13 12 March 1935, 6: On the brick wall at the side of our street door can still be seen faintly two large letters, “P. P.,” which stood for Poplar Patrol. Every Friday night it was my job to collect 3d. from each house-hold that belonged to
On the last night of January 1916, a large force of seven Zeppelins crossed over the Wash into Norfolk, heading for the industrial cities of the Midlands. Unsure of their location, most of them instead dropped their bombs on relatively unimportant targets. But at least they got home okay. The defending aircraft of the RFC
This is Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, on the morning of 8 March 1918, after it had been hit by a 1-ton bomb dropped by a Giant bomber the night before — one of the largest to fall on London during the First World War and the most materially destructive. Twelve people were killed (including Lena
I’ve just had a go at working out who held the influential position of aeronautical correspondent (or air correspondent, in later years) for The Times for its first third of a century or so. No names were used in the articles themselves, so the easiest way to find them seems to be through the obituary
So we’ve seen American claims of a British secret air defence weapon in the Battle of Britain; American claims of British secret air defence weapons in the mid-1930s; and American ideas for superweapons to break the deadlock of the First World War. What do I mean suggest by these examples? Why have I called these
The Electrical Experimenter was an American science magazine, founded and edited by Hugo Gernsback. These covers were published during the First World War, and illustrate ways in which science could be used to create new weapons and new defences. Many of them are just a little far-fetched, such as the land ironclad shown above.
Here’s an interesting inversion of my usual phantom airship scare. The Zeppelin was real enough — it was L6, raiding Essex on the night of 15 April 1915. The phantom was instead a motor-car: Since the visit of the Zeppelin early on Friday morning the Maldon district has been full of rumours of mysterious motor-cars
