If anyone came close to creating a death ray weapon by the end of the Second World War, it was the Japanese army. It wouldn’t have helped them much, however, as they weren’t at war with rabbits. According to Richard Overy in The Air War 1939-1945 (Washington: Potomac Books, 2005 [1980]), 195: The lack of […]
Because I’m too lazy to write a proper post, here are some of my recent tweets: The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in The Times was on 24 May 1939, as the owner of 2 yachts entered in a race to Germany. The 1st use of the word “Luftwaffe” in the Manchester Guardian was
After a long hiatus, a new Military History Carnival has appeared, at The Edge of the American West and H-War. (Thanks, David Silbey!) A post on combat drones at Legal History Blog caught my eye. It suggests that drones are part of a process in America, post-Vietnam, whereby the need for public support for military
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] ‘To-day and To-morrow’ was a series of over a hundred essays on ‘the future’ of a diverse range of subjects, which were published in pamphlet form by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. between 1924 and 1931. The authors are equally varied: some were acknowledged experts in their fields, others seem to
Field Marshal Jan Smuts, prime minister of South Africa, broadcast a speech on the BBC on 29 September 1946. He talked about the prospects for peace in the post-war world, a subject on which he could claim some authority, since he had helped unify Anglophones and Afrikaners after the Boer War, and was involved in
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
In June 1935, the Daily Express ran a story about three ‘secret British air devices’. The source was a story in the Chicago Tribune by that paper’s London correspondent, John Steele: The devices are declared to be a new “mirage” smoke screen, a new seventeen-foot long anti-aircraft rifle, and a robot airplane which, controlled by
I’m pleased to announce that my first paper has been accepted for publication, by War in History. It’s about the international air force idea and is entitled ‘World police for world peace: British internationalism and the threat of a knock-out blow from the air, 1919-1945’. It won’t actually appear for some time, but under the
It’s the 75th anniversary of the MacRobertson Trophy Air Race. More specifically, it’s the 75th anniversary of the day the race was won, 23 October 1934. The winners were C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black of Britain, who took just two days and twenty-three hours to cover the 18200 km from London to
