Like many people – out of the sort of people who know these sorts of things, that is – I knew of Jan Smuts’ key role in the origins of both the RAF and the Air Ministry. It was the so-called ‘Smuts report’ to the War Cabinet, in August 1917, which set the whole process […]
Somehow I managed to miss – by exactly a year! – the publication of the third and final volume of Ian Castle’s history of the Zeppelin and Gotha raids: I included Zeppelin Onslaught on my 1914–1918 air raids reading list back in 2022. In the meantime I’ve read Zeppelin Inferno, and having just finished Gotha
In my previous post, I discussed my concerns with the way sources are used in Neil Hanson’s First Blitz.1 Here I turn to the problem of strategy, which goes more to the argument of the book. Again there are two parts to this, one broad and one narrow. I’ll start with the broad. Hanson’s argument
This is a continuation, of sorts, of my series of posts critiquing the recent trend of describing the air raids on Britain in the First World War as the ‘First Blitz’. I’ve separated it out because, although it is about the best-known book to use that phrase in its title – Neil Hanson’s First Blitz
![German propaganda poster with a vibrant and striking image depicting swarms of British aircraft bombing an industrial site to illustrate the following quote, by British Labour Leader Johnston Hicks [sic], which appeared in the 'Daily Telegraph' on January 3rd 1918: 'One must bomb the Rhineland industrial regions with one hundred aircraft day after day, until the treatment has had its effect!’](https://airminded.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/artv05099.jpg)
In the previous post, I discussed some of my objections to the idea that the air raids on Britain in the FIrst World were the ‘First Blitz’. I don’t think my arguments were completely persuasive, even to myself (which is why I decided to work through them in public like this). But I ended by
You might think that the first Blitz was the Blitz, i.e. the German bombing of British cities in 1940-1941, at the time was understood as a form of blitzkrieg, which was then shortened to ‘blitz’ or ‘Blitz’. Of course, that doesn’t mean a blitz couldn’t be retrospectively recognised, and indeed it was soon applied, for
John Llewelyn Rhys, The Flying Shadow (Bath: Handheld Press, 2022). John Llewelyn Rhys, England Is My Village and The World Owes Me a Living (Bath: Handheld Press, 2022). John Llewelyn Rees was born on 7 May 1911, got his pilot’s license on 4 July 1934, and was killed in a flying accident on 5 August
When is an mystery aeroplane panic not a mystery aeroplane panic? When it’s a mystery sampan panic, obviously.
For the last (?) time: all RAAF, all the time; from Bristol Fighters through Sunderlands and Sabres to Super Hornets.
A mixed bag as the end of the year of reading airmindedly approaches. (I think there’ll be one more edition, though.)
