NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 109 is a copy of a letter from A. M. Black to Major Hogan of the ‘Intelligence Service’. It’s undated, but NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 108 (a cover letter from military intelligence to naval intelligence) says that it was written on 10 April 1918; the incident it relates to seems to […]
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 1011 is a police report from Sergeant W. Morris of Gosford, north of Sydney in the NSW Central Coast region. It’s an account of a mystery aeroplane sighting made by Lily Moir, a 23 year old woman living with her mother on a farm 1.5 miles east of Gosford. Shortly after
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 556 is an extract from a weekly military intelligence report compiled for the Australian section of the Imperial General Staff, which has been forwarded on to the Navy. (It contains information up to 30 March, but it’s possible that it was compiled a day or two later.) It summarises a report
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 871 is a copy of an anonymous letter sent to the Minister of Defence in Melbourne in reference to reports ‘in the press on Saturday that two aeroplanes were seen flying over Nyang’ — likely either the Argus or the Age. Probably the latter, since it added a report from the
NAA: MP1049/1, 1918/066, page 878, is a report submitted by Constable J. Wright of Ouyen police station, in the Mallee region of northwestern Victoria: I have to report that whilst I was in the vicinity of Nyang about thirty miles from Ouyen at 4 30 pm on 21.3.18 I saw two flying machines pass overhead.
When casting about for some way to mark the centenary of the 1918 Australian mystery aeroplane panic, an obvious idea was to post-blog it, especially since it’s something I haven’t done in a while. For new readers, post-blogging is my term for taking a historical event spanning weeks or months and posting about how it
As I discussed in a previous post, the arrival of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 suddenly made the Aerial League of the British Empire’s foray into wartime propaganda films irrelevant. Yet the bizarre coincidence that the film happened to give a prominent place to the time and date of the Armistice suggested the possibility
This summary of an unreleased and untitled film is from the ‘Grave and Gay’ column of the Preston Herald for 7 December 1918: In this film a man dreams that England is under German rule, and various scenes are shown depicting the organised brutality of the Boche. But, in the dream, there is a movement
Yesterday there was quite a bit of activity on Twitter in response to the following tweet: This passage made me laugh loudly. Such a burn. #rekt #deception pic.twitter.com/toycYnNFRV — Kate Pearce (@secvalve) November 20, 2016 Yes, it’s our old friends, the wooden bombs! A number of people linked either to me or to one of
I ended the previous post in this series with the tease: In a final post, I will discuss what [Alban] Roberts called his airship, and what it might mean. That was over two months ago! I think it’s time to finally reveal the answer to this question. Errol Martyn, who has written what must be
