1920s

My article, 'The meaning of Hendon: the Royal Air Force Display, aerial theatre and the technological sublime, 1920–37', has been accepted for publication in Historical Research (the journal of the Institute of Historical Research). I'm not sure when it will be published yet, and I can't self-archive the post-peer-reviewed version until 24 months after publication. The submitted, pre-peer-reviewed version I can self-archive now, however. There are some substantial differences between the two, mainly in the historiographical discussion in the introduction, as well as some errors I caught after submission, but the two versions are close enough that I'm happy to post the submitted version now -- and here it is. This is the abstract:

The annual Royal Air Force Display at Hendon was a hugely popular form of aerial theatre, with attendance peaking at 195,000. Most discussions of Hendon have understood it as 'a manifestation of popular imperialism', focusing on the climactic set-pieces which portrayed the bombing of a Middle Eastern village or desert fortress. However, scenarios of this kind were a small minority of Hendon’s set-pieces: most depicted warfare against other industrialised states. Hendon should rather be seen as an attempt to persuade spectators that future wars could be won through the use of airpower rather than large armies or expensive navies.

There are three things I wanted to do with this article, which to some extent are independent of each other. The first is to push against the prevailing historiographical understanding of the RAF Display as primarily imperialist and racist propaganda. This is the one thing that everyone 'knows' about Hendon, and I've written that myself, but it's wrong. As noted in the abstract, my case here is primarily numerical and chronological: only a quarter of the set-pieces were 'imperial', none of them after 1930. This doesn't necessarily invalidate discussions of those specific set-pieces as imperialist and racist propaganda, because they were, but we need to recognise that they were not what Hendon was mainly about.

So the second thing I wanted to do was to offer an alternative reading of Hendon, and that is as 'one long argument for airpower supremacy' (to quote myself). Most of the set-pieces involved industrial (and so presumably European) targets: factories, power stations, and so on. (See my posts on the Hendon set-pieces.) These were targets that only the RAF could attack. Other set-piece targets, such as siege guns and merchant cruisers, could have provided an opportunity to portrary cooperation with the Army and the Navy, but didn't (a point I could have made more strongly in the article). So Hendon was 'a cultural projection of what David Edgerton terms liberal militarism' (to quote myself again!)

The third and final thing I wanted to do with this article was to showcase the usefulness of aerial theatre. I've already given the concept an outing in my article on 'The militarisation of aerial theatre', but Hendon was of course the biggest and best air display in interwar Britain and so it's the ideal case study -- if the concept has any validity at all! I've also tried to link aerial theatre to the concept of the technological sublime; again, I'll be interested to see what others make of this.

This is not my final word on Hendon, by any means, but it's a good start.

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Australian Air Squadrons Fund leaflet

This is the cover of a leaflet produced in 1916 by the Australian Air Squadrons Fund, the Australian arm of the Imperial Air Flotilla which raised funds around the British Empire for presentation 'battle-planes' for the Royal Flying Corps. My interest in it is not so much for its own sake, though I am struck by the slightly confusing promise that this aircraft 'will carry your name and message of sympathy and support over the heads of our troops into the enemy capitals', as well as the sadly forlorn hope that 'This is, please God, the only war in which we will be able to take part'. Rather, it's here as an example of the aviation records to be found in the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP), which is being digitised and made freely available through Trove.
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Sunday News, 30 July 1944, 4

Since this thread received absolutely no love over on Twitter, some lazyblogging of a 1944 article entitled 'Jargon of the skies' by James E. Wellard on RAF and US Army slang, published in the Toronto Star Weekly (via the Perth Sunday Times):


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Longmont Daily Times, 4 December 1926, p. 4

Proselytisers are famously early adopters of communications technology (see: the Gutenberg Bible). It shouldn't be surprising that missionaries were intrigued by the development of aviation: a Baptist minister, Reverend F. W. Boreham, even claimed that

It was with a view to winging the Gospel to the uttermost ends of the eaxth that the first airman looked wistfully skywards.1

He was referring to Francesco Lana de Terzi, a Jesuit who proposed the idea of the vacuum airship in 1670, a technological impossibility at the time. Somewhat more realistically, in 1909 Reverend W. Kingscote Greenland, apparently a Methodist minister, argued in his journal The Young Man that 'the coming of the airship will materially affect the diffusion of the Gospel throughout the world':

He looks forward with confidence to the day when the first missionary airship will sail with a precious cargo of heroic hearts and copies of the Holy Scriptures. Already, he says, the airship can travel one hundred miles an hour. That would mean that the missionary could get to America in a day and a quarter; he could leave England on Tuesday, and preach in Calcutta or Hankow on the following Sunday. How this would almost do away with the tragedy of parting with wife and children and dear ones that now makes the missionary's lot so sadly heroic.2

Not only that but

in case of attack by natives, outbreak of fire, or flood, the ability to sail upward into serene air and safety will much lessen the trials of his life.3

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  1. Daily Herald (Adelaide), 10 January 1914, 3. []
  2. Cornish Telegraph (Penzance), 3 June 1909, 4. Greenland's article seems to have been partly reproduced, without attribution, in Evening Journal (Adelaide), 22 May 1909, 5. []
  3. Cornish Telegraph (Penzance), 3 June 1909, 4. []

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Popular Mechanics, October 1922

John Ptak asks of this cover from the October 1922 issue Popular Mechanics: 'why?' It's a good question. The accompanying article doesn't really help:

Consider yourself aboard a giant airplane whose whirring propellers rapidly drive from view faint objects on the earth far below. As towns and hamlets recede in the distance you realize that you are fast approaching the one that is your destination, for the captain is giving orders to make ready for the discharge of passengers at one of the intermediate points along the route of the great air liner. The crew unfold from the capacious hold a small air boat, and lower it dangling from the huge hull by its special tackle. You and several fellow passengers climb down into the seats behind the pilot and buckle yourselves in as the big ship slows its engines to enable the little wings to catch the air. With a quick movement of a lever your steersman unleashes the small craft, which begins its motorless flight and gracefully glides downward to a safe landing, while the mother plane speeds out of sight.

It turns out that this was an idea which cropped up repeatedly in the first few decades of flight. But such 'aerial trains' never quite came to commercial fruition. Which suggests that yes, you could indeed consider yourself leaving an airliner in mid-air; but you probably wouldn't want to.
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[Cross-posted at Airplay.]

Australia is a long way from anywhere, even from itself. It nearly always takes a long time to get to where you want to go. Historian Geoffrey Blainey famously popularised the idea that this remoteness has shaped Australian history and culture in the title of his 1966 book, The Tyranny of Distance. The longing of European Australians, especially, for closer connections to Europe and America found an expression in an interest in technological solutions, as in a speech given by J. L. Rentoul in 1918:

We are now living in a day when fast ocean greyhounds have broken the tyranny of distance; when the wireless has annihilated space.

A couple of years later, Rentoul might have mentioned the aeroplane: the first flight from England to Australia was completed by Keith and Ross Smith in their Vickers Vimy in December 1919. They took 28 days in total, which admittedly may not seem impressive to Australians today, when we can get to London in under 24 hours. But when compared with 45 days by steamship (Rentoul's 'fast ocean greyhounds'), that was a huge leap forward. And it was only the start. In the 1920s and 1930s, the England-Australia route became the ultimate venture for pioneers who wanted to test themselves and their machines against one of the longest air routes in the world: Alan Cobham, Bert Hinkler, Amy Johnson. In 1938, you could board a Qantas airliner in Sydney and be in England 10 days later; another fifteen years on, that was down to 3.5 days. The introduction of jets in 1965 brought the travel time down even further.
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The lost Gotha of New Farm Park is lost in two senses. Firstly, because I'm fairly sure that it no longer exists. Secondly, because I'm quite sure that it never existed.

Chris O'Regan pointed out on Twitter that 'there used to be a captured German plane in New Farm Park' in Brisbane. This was easy to confirm in Trove; it was offered to Brisbane as a war trophy in 1921:

The Brisbane City Council yesterday agreed to accept a captured German aeroplane offered by the Australian War Museum. Authority was given for the erection of a shelter at a cost of £50, in New Farm Park, on a site to be fixed by the chairman of the Parks Committee and the superintendent of parks.1

But the shelter evidently didn't offer much protection from the elements, because by March 1930 the aeroplane was in poor condition and 'badly in need of reconditioning':

The chairman (Alderman E. Lanham) stated that no financial provision had been made for the work, and while there was some sentiment attached to the capture of the machine it was not a proposal upon which the council was prepared to spend a big sum at present. The committee had agreed to defer the question of repairs until an inspection had been made by the parks superintendent (Mr. H. Moore) and himself.2

The aeroplane was offered to the Queensland Museum -- home to another, unique, war trophy, A7V Mephisto -- which unfortunately had 'no accomodation' for the machine.3 Dismantling began the following January, at which point the Queensland branch of the Australian Flying Corps Association offered to maintain it. The council agreed, but on condition that it was moved elsewhere.4 In June, it was announced that the association had 'offered to recondition the machine and place it in a conspicuous position on the Archerfield Aerodrome', then Brisbane's major (and very new) airport.5 In May 1932 it was said to be 'at present being reconditioned by the [Queensland] Aero Club' -- so not the Australian Flying Corps Association -- 'preparatory to its being mounted at Archerfield aerodrome'.6 I can't find any trace of the aeroplane after that. I suspect it was never placed into any 'conspicuous position' but instead the reconditioning stretched out until it was eventually scrapped, perhaps in 1939 when the RAAF moved in.
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  1. Telegraph (Brisbane), 21 December 1921, 8. []
  2. Brisbane Courier, 26 March 1930, 14. []
  3. Brisbane Courier, 1 October 1930, 14. []
  4. Telegraph (Brisbane), 21 January 1931, 8. []
  5. Telegraph (Brisbane), 6 June 1931, 9. []
  6. Brisbane Courier, 26 May 1932, 14. []

My article, 'The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the World Wars', is available on Contempory British History's website. It seems like only yesterday that I uploaded the self-archived version -- in fact it was only 5 weeks ago! While the formal and final version of the article won't be available until 2020, thanks to the modern marvel of the internet it's as good as published; the only difference is that this version lacks the volume information and page numbers (referring to a print edition which fewer and fewer people will ever read). For reference, here's the abstract again:

Aerial theatre, the use of aviation spectacle to project images of future warfare, national power and technological prowess, was a key method for creating an airminded public in the early 20th century. The most significant and influential form of aerial theatre in interwar Britain was the Royal Air Force (RAF) Display at Hendon, in which military aircraft put on impressive flying performances before large crowds, including an elaborate set-piece acting out a battle scenario with an imaginary enemy. Hendon was emulated by other air displays in Britain and in Australia, even civilian ones. Indeed, the inability of the much smaller Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to regularly project spectacle on the scale of Hendon across a much larger nation created a gap which civilian aviation organisations then tried to fill. Hendon thus helped to propagate a militarised civilian aerial theatre, and hence airmindedness, in both Britain and Australia.

I presented the initial version of this research at a symposium at Flinders University in honour of Eric Richards, the eminent historian of migration. Sadly, he passed away last week. I only met him briefly, but I know from the responses of his former colleagues and students that he will be missed. Vale.

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The first real air raid on Australia was against Darwin on 19 February 1942. I don't know when the first fake air raid on Australia was, but there was one against Melbourne on 14 October 1929:

An aerial attack was made on Melbourne to-day by a group of seagull [sic] machines, which had been sent up from the aircraft carrier, Albatross. Overcoming opposition from a fleet of land 'planes, the raiders dropped several bombs, scoring vital hits, according to the attackers. The attack was part of air force exercises. The Albatross was outside the Heads, when the Seagull machines were depatched [sic], and three of these machines managed to reach the city, in spite of the efforts of 'planes from Point Cook aerodrome.1

A more detailed (but harder to read) account reveals that that Albatross, representing a 'hostile seaplane carrier' outside Port Phillip Heads, launched a force of six Supermarine Seagulls and one Wackett Widgeon, which was sighted by a defending Supermarine Southampton off Brighton. The attackers were intercepted by aircraft from Point Cook, but

three broke through and flew over Melbourne from the direction of Port Melbourne, circling over Victoria Barracks and turning back to sea from a point presumably above Princes Bridge.2

A later newspaper report suggested that 'Under war conditions, the city would have suffered many casualties'.3 The official result of the exercise does not seem to have been published in the press, but it seems like it might have been fudged in favour of the defenders:

Bringing 1929 to a close, Albatross took part in a combined RAN-RAAF exercise in Port Phillip Bay in October. The point of this exercise was to test the carrier in making an air raid, along with assessing the efficiency of RAAF cooperation with Navy in repelling a seaborne air attack. According to reports on the exercise, the defence against the carrier attack was only successful because scouting Southamptons set off from Point Cook, without orders, some time before warning was actually received of approaching enemy aircraft. In fact, as noted by the CO of No. 1 FTS, aerial patrols had failed to sight the approaching naval force. Strikes had then been mounted against these ships off Frankston, involving Moths (representing single-seat fighters) and Wapitis. One RAAF pilot whose part in the scheme entailed simply flying over the Melbourne dock area probably summed up the feelings of many of those involved when he noted in his log-book that the exercise was 'A farce—nothing done or to see'.4.

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  1. Townsville Daily Bulletin, 16 October 1929, 4. []
  2. Herald (Melbourne), 14 October 1929, 1. []
  3. The Call (Perth), 25 October 1929, 1. []
  4. C. D. Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother: the Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39 (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991), 218. []