Aircraft

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Last year I was playing with a plotting program for Mac OS X, which was pretty good, but not quite satisfactory. I've found a better one, Plot, which is free (as in beer), fairly easy to use, and very customisable. It has its own idiosyncrasies, but I like it a lot. Here's an example plot, showing how the top speed of British combat increased up to the end of the Second World War.

Maximum speed of British combat aircraft, 1912-1945

The data are drawn from John W. R. Taylor, Combat Aircraft of the World From 1909 to the Present (New York: Paragon, 1979). This excludes aircraft which never saw service as well as those not intended for combat (though not all actually saw combat). The year is that in which it entered service (usually with the RAF), or if this wasn't given, the year when the prototype first flew. (Some aircraft unfortunately had neither, and so were omitted.) The maximum speeds, in miles per hour, are not necessarily comparable, because they were often obtained at different heights; also, they may not have been sustainable under normal conditions. But they should be broadly indicative of real-world maximums. I've classified each aircraft as either fighters (red) or bombers (blue), based upon their actual use. However, that's fairly arbitrary for the period up to 1915, which is when aircraft adapted for specialised roles began to appear. I haven't included seaplanes but I have included carrier-borne aircraft. Generally, I have only included data for the most representative version (eg not for each of the innumerable marks of Spitfire). Because of these caveats and inconsistencies, the plot should not be taken too seriously -- it's just for illustrative purposes.

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[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]

Photographs of actual combat in the First World War are exceedingly rare, in the air as well as on the ground. Both of these are purportedly of Zeppelins flying over Britain. Are they fake or not? My answers are below.

The low down thing that plays the low down game

`The low down thing that plays the low down game'. Source: British postcard, Zeppelin im Krieg.

Over London's roofs

'Over London's roofs. London's defences against Zeppelin raids were never adequate. Searchlights sometimes succeeded in spotting the raiders, as in the actual photograph by an amateur shown in the impression on the opposite page, but the anti-aircraft guns never secured a direct hit. Zeppelin raiders were only checked and finally defeated by aeroplane attack'. Source: Hamilton Fyfe, "Early Zeppelin nights of terror", in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [ca. 1935]), 17.

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This seems to be a snippet from a documentary made in New Zealand.1 The main point of it is to show a Camel and a Spitfire flying side by side, but I found the first half more interesting, about the practical aspects of flying a First World War-vintage aeroplane. For example, I hadn't realised that the scarves worn by the pilots were not fashion accessories!

  1. No doubt the film crew were off eating fush and chups shortly afterwards. [↩]

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The War Room reports the short list of names for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter:

  • Black Mamba
  • Cyclone
  • Lightning II
  • Piasa
  • Reaper
  • Spitfire II

As noted at the War Room, most of these names are really, really bad, and sound like something a 12 year old boy would come up with.1 Of interest here is the homage to great fighter planes of yore -- the Spitfire and the P-38 Lightning. (At least, I assume that Lightning II refers to that and not the English Electric Lightning, itself one of the great post-war fighters.) Presumably, Spitfire II is on the list because of the British participation in the project (though their US$2 billion is just a drop in the bucket, when compared with the projected total cost of US$244 billion). Cyclone sounds like it would have fitted in well alongside the Hurricane, Tempest, Typhoon and Whirlwind, too. Other than those choices, these are some pretty silly names. Piasa is more likely to evoke feelings of slight puzzlement than dread.

Still, fair's fair: the British have made some aircraft with pretty silly names too. Such as the Fawn. The Flycatcher. The Tabloid. The Iris. It's lucky the next war didn't start in 1931, when the Blackburn Iris (a seaplane) entered service; imagine how dreadfully embarassed the aircrew would have been to have been seen by the enemy flying around in something named after a flower.

Of course, the name of a combat aircraft is irrelevant to its actual performance. I guess the only real purpose is for propaganda, particularly on the home front. In that light, it's interesting that the names given to British fighters2 become more aggressive-sounding over time -- think of the difference between the Siskin III (a 'small songbird', according to the OED) of the mid-1920s and the Spitfire of the late 1930s. If you are staring total air war in the face, you might as well put yourself in the mood ...

  1. Of course, the only people, other than 12 year old boys, who will care what the JSF is called are 12 year old boys at heart anyway :) [↩]
  2. Bombers generally were generally named after places -- Overstrand, Bombay, Wellington, Manchester. [↩]

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David List added a most informative comment on my About page the other day, responding to an old post, which I thought I would highlight and respond to here.

Regarding my post on a claimed insertion of a German spy by parachute in 1917 (which I doubted), David notes that there were Allied experiments in this direction at around the same time:

apropos of your post on 'airborne spies of the Kaiser' that parachuting of agents in World War 1 was a British/Italian technique. Tony Wedgewood Benn's (the retired British MP) father was one of the real practitioner's and you will find accounts of his missions in Italy both in the published literature and in files at The National Archives at Kew, UK. Further, in fiction, you will also find a 'Biggles' story 'The Rescue Flight' I think it was called which is based on this.

(A-ha! Biggles strikes again.) I'm very interested to learn of William Wedgwood Benn's experience here. In the 1920s, he was a very airminded MP: on several occasions during parliamentary debates, he declared that airpower had made the Army and Navy obsolete, and that therefore their budgets should be cut and the money given to the RAF instead (an idea known as 'substitution'). Following David's lead, I learn from the Oxford DNB that Benn had a distinguished career in the First World War, partly in the RNAS, where he served as an observer and a pilot. (His other exploits included fighting at Gallipoli, guerilla warfare, and privateering in the Red Sea!) So his RNAS service helps explain his airmindedness. And if the Allies were dropping spies by parachute at this time, it makes it more plausible that the Germans might try it too.

Another interesting item related by David is about a British airship used for covert operations:

By extension you will also find acounts in the literature, in 'Cross and Cockade' and also, again, the files at TNA accounts of 'the Black Ship' which was an RNAS SS dirigible intended for clandestine night landings and pick ups.

Very interesting! Looking through Ces Mowthorpe's Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), this would appear to be SS-40, which had a silenced engine and was 'Modified for special night flights over enemy lines', including a black envelope (hence the name 'Black Ship', presumably). In August and September 1916 it undertook 'experimental night reconnaissance flights over enemy lines and Somme battlefield' (p. 40). As the experiments were not repeated, I guess they weren't very successful! I can't find a picture on the web, so I have scanned in the photo of SS-40 from Battlebags (p. 42). The gondola is actually a modified aeroplane fuselage, a feature of the SS type.

SS-40

It's not exactly James Bond material, is it ...

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R101 riding at her home mast

'R101 RIDING AT HER HOME MAST. Set in a frame of typical English countryside beauty, R101, product of modern engineering and cornerstone of Britain's hopes of commercial air supremacy, rides at her mast at Cardington, in Bedfordshire. This mooring mast was specially built to facilitate the handling of Britain's largest airships, R100 and R101, which were completed in the autumn of 1929.'

It was the 75th anniversary of the R101 disaster a few days ago. The R101 - then the largest aircraft ever constructed - crashed in stormy weather in France, early on 5 October 1930, on its way to Karachi in British India (now Pakistan). Out of 54 passengers and crew, 48 died in the crash or shortly thereafter, including the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Thomson, and his Director of Civil Aviation, Sefton Brancker. With the onset of the Slump, and the Labour government's political difficulties, the state-sponsored scheme to bind the Empire together by airship was difficult to sustain; after R101, it was abandoned.It has been suggested that Thomson's triumphant return from India might have at least reinvigorated Ramsay Macdonald and his government, but we'll never know. See John Duggan and Henry Cord Meyer, Airships in International Affairs, 1890-1940 (London: Palgrave, 2001), 175-6. Britain eventually scrapped its other (and more successful) large airship, the R100, and shelved plans for the even bigger R102 and R103. The Karachi base was never used. No more airships were built in the UK until 1951.

Image and caption source: John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [ca. 1935]), 638.

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Giffard's airship

Well, as has kindly been pointed out to me, I missed Mers-el-Kebir day, and I missed Battle of Britain day - but I haven't forgotten Henri Giffard day! On this day in 1852, near Paris, Giffard (sporting a top hat for the momentous occasion) made the first ever airship flight, covering a distance of 17 miles in about 3 hours. The airship was steam-powered (a whole 3 horsepower). This was the first controlled, powered flight in history. The shadow of the Zeppelin begins here!

Image source: Smithsonian Institution (negative 73-05535).

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A couple of extremely informative websites I've just come across: Airshipsonline, home of the Airship Heritage Trust, dealing with most British airships since 1900 (wot, no Willows airships?); and Imperial Airways, home of the HP 42 project, which aims to build a flying replica of the British Handley Page 42 "Hannibal" biplane airliner of the 1920s and 1930s. If it were my project, I'd recreate one of Imperial's Empire-class flying boats instead, way cooler than the HP 42 which, apparently, people were embarrased to be seen flying in at the time. They did not compare favourably to all those sleek European and American monoplanes. (On the other hand, Le Corbusier did include a photo of a HP 42 in his 1935 book Aircraft, on aeroplanes as expressions of modernity.) But it's not my project, and a good thing too, because I haven't got a hundreth of the energy these guys have - their previous triumph being the Vimy replica I've posted about previously. Seriously, I'd love to see this fly. Best of luck to them!