1940s

Hitler's Ju 52/3m over Nuremberg, 1934
1930s, 1940s, Books, Film, Pictures

The man in the high aeroplane

Swastika Night was written by Katharine Burdekin under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. It’s a dystopian novel in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan have conquered the world and divided it between them. Nothing so original in that, you might think — except that Swastika Night was published in June 1937, before the invasion of Poland

Australian Air Squadrons Fund leaflet
1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Aerial theatre, After 1950, Archives, Australia, Civil aviation, Ephemera, International air force, Pictures, Tools and methods

AIR in the AJCP

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

Popular Mechanics, October 1922
1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Aircraft, Art, Australia, Before 1900, Civil aviation, Periodicals, Pictures, Words

The never-arriving aerial train

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

london sydney days, 1859-1952
1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Australia, Before 1900, Civil aviation, Grants, Pictures, Plots and tables, Tools and methods

Breaking the tyranny of distance

[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.

Big Ben
1940s, Books, Periodicals, Pictures, Radio, Rumours

A tall tale of Big Ben

As part of a discussion about the worldwide syncronisation of time, Yuval Noah Harari writes: During World War Two, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour — the magical sound of freedom. Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the

Dare-Devil Aces, November 1937
1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Art, Periodicals, Pictures

Pulp aviation

This is the cover of the November 1937 issue of an American pulp magazine called Dare-Devil Aces. I vaguely knew about the existence of these aviation adventure magazines, or air pulps, but I’d assumed they were filled with stories of chivalric air combat of the Great War. Many undoubtedly were, but that’s not what this

1930s, 1940s, Books, Civil defence, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Rumours

Air panics of the British Raj

As long-time (and very patient) readers of this blog will know, I am fascinated by the historical evidence for what I term air panics. Most obviously this includes phantom airship and mystery aeroplane panics, but also rearmament panics, Zeppelin base panics, red balloon panics… anything and everything which provides evidence for what the British people

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