In 1923, the Salisbury Committee enquired into the proper relationship between the RAF, on the one hand, and the Army and Navy, on the other. According to Andrew Boyle’s biography of Hugh Trenchard, the then Chief of the Air Staff quoted a recent statement by Sir Ian Hamilton (the commander at Gallipoli) at some point […]
Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 [1832]. Probably something anybody with pretensions to being a military historian should have to hand, even if other strategists have been more influential in different contexts, places and times. (I recently came across Trenchard speaking of Edward Hamley in the same breath as Clausewitz and
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Not a phrase I ever expected to come across, but here it is, in David Omissi’s Air Power and Colonial Control, the context being the introduction of one the most successful aircraft of the interwar period, the Hawker Hart: The Hart was soon found to be suitable for India; fifty-seven
I’ve recently come across what appears to be a new biography of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, 1st and 3rd Chief of the Air Staff, etc: Sylvia Andrew, Lord Trenchard’s Choice (Richmond: Mills and Boon, 2002). I say ‘appears to be’ because there are serious discrepancies with the
A few days after Xmas, I felt like I should be getting back into reading something thesis-related, but at the same time I still felt like I was still in holiday mode. So I compromised and read something on topic, but a bit lighter than my usual academic fare, namely Waiting for Hitler: Voices from
Basil Mathews. We Fight for the Future: The British Commonwealth and the World of To-morrow. London: Collins, 1940. Found this in a secondhand bookshop for $3. Even at that price I was a bit unsure about buying it — there seems to be some talk in it about setting up an international federal system after
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Recently, I read Alan Kramer’s Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. It’s an excellent book, both illuminating and informative (being airminded, I found the section on the Austrian and German bombing of Italy to be especially fascinating), and I highly recommend it.1 But there
The latest post at Axis of Evel Knievel reminds me that today is the 90th anniversary of the Halifax disaster. On 6 December 1917, two ships collided off the Nova Scotian port of Halifax. One, the SS Mont-Blanc, was carrying huge quantities of TNT, guncotton, and other highly combustible materials, destined for the war in
Operation Chastise was the codename for the famous ‘dambusters’ raid carried out against three German dams by 617 Squadron on the night of 17 May 1943. The idea was to breach the dams and thereby deprive the factories of the Ruhr of their electricity. As far as the standard story goes — which everyone knows
Ron Austin. The Fighting Fourth: A History of Sydney’s 4th Battalion 1914-19. McCrae: Slouch Hat Publications, 2007. Private Mulqueeney’s unit, though the poor sod was with it in the field for only a couple of months before his death. It had earlier landed at Gallipoli, on the first day; and after the Somme fought at
