This is odd: To my readers, then, let me explain again that a pursuit plane should not carry out any pursuing. It should be a machine designed for fighting. It should have the qualities of fast climb, reasonable manœuvrability and gun-power. It should be simple in design and cheap to produce, because it will take […]
Arthur Harris. Bomber Offensive. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005 [1947]. It’s that man again! And his memoirs. William Mitchell. Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power — Economic and Military. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1988 [1925]. Mitchell was not hugely influential in Britain, other than for bombing the Ostfriesland and, to
R. J. B. Bosworth. Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945. London: Penguin, 2006. I have plenty of books on generic fascism, German fascism, British fascism … so one on the original fascism doesn’t seem excessive! Paul Kennedy. The Parliament of Man: The United Nations and the Quest for World Government. London: Allen Lane, 2006.
This sticker is in the back of a book published in 1940, originally part of the collection of the Public Lending Library of Victoria (itself a part of the Public Library of Victoria, as the SLV was then known). I was struck particularly by no. 4. Were books considered possible vectors for infectious disease —
DO YOU KNOW — Whether you can be gassed by bombs dropped from airplanes? The real strength of Germany’s Air Force? What sort of an air force Mussolini has? Why bombers cannot win the present war? What the Suicide Club of the war will be in history? Why there will be few romantic Aces in
Scott W. Palmer. Dictatorship of the Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. I followed Scott’s advice, but as I don’t have a car or an office, I ended up with only one copy :) It looks like a worthy companion to Corn and Fritzsche, and indeed, now
Vera Brittain. One Voice: Pacifist Writings from the Second World War. London and New York: Continuum, 2005. Consists two of her wartime works, Humiliation with Honour (1942) and Seed of Chaos (1944), a condemnation of RAF area bombing. Scholarly introduction by Aleksandra Bennett, foreword by Shirley Williams. Peter Cooksley. The Home Front: Civilian Life in
The front cover of Victor Lefebure’s Common Sense about Disarmament (London: Victor Gollancz, 1932); the artist’s name is Douglas L. Dick. (I also have a colour scan — the title is in red and the background is a cream tint — but it’s rather muddy and much less striking than the monochrome version above.) Note
Actually, as interwar visions of armageddon go, this is pretty mild. But it reminded me of the scene in Terminator 2: Judgement Day where Sarah Connor has a nightmare about the coming nuclear war, with a nuclear warhead exploding over a playground filled with children: He was lying on a hill-side. Below him there was
James S. Corum. The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997. This will be a helpful reality check, as I spend so much time reading (usually greatly exaggerated) accounts of the capabilities and intentions of the German air force. Peter Fleming. Invasion 1940: An Account of the German Preparations
