Long-time reader, second-time commenter Ian Evans was in the Royal Observer Corps in York at the end of the 1950s. Here he describes how the ROC, in addition to retaining something like its planespotting functions during the Second World War, took on the job of measuring the Third: When I joined the ROC (1958) it […]
While in York Castle Museum, I was surprised to come across Black-Out, a ‘skilful card game — full of interest’. It’s one of the British war games I mentioned in a previous post. At that time I only had a low-res photo from the BBC website to go on, so I was glad of the
In a previous post, I looked at some of Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions, made in 1946, about how rockets would change the types of weapons and vehicles used by military forces of the future.1 He got some hits (space stations) but, on balance, more misses (rocket mines, more turret fighters). In the latter half of
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
The above photograph, and all of the following, are from Poison Gas (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1935).
Sunday no. 4 was the occasion (after the spooky Big Ben) for my visit to the Imperial War Museum London, which of course was always going to be a highlight of my sightseeing here.
The other day I came across a fascinating article by H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore. Mencken was very interested in colloquial English, and to this end penned “War words in England”, published in the February 1944 American Speech, about new words coming into use in the British press as a result of the
If you were wondering what the biggest and loudest air raid siren of all time is, then wonder no more, because it’s the American Chrysler Victory Siren, made in the 1950s. Well, I don’t know for sure that it was — I’d like to see what the Soviets had to offer — but it was
[I posted this last Wednesday, but somehow, it was marked as “private” rather than “published”, so nobody saw it but me! So I’m fixing that and bumping it to the top.] The talk went off pretty well, I think — at least I didn’t hear any snoring and got some good questions at the end.
Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster. On the evening of 3 March 1943, 173 people — men, women and children — died at the Bethnal Green Tube station, the greatest loss of life of any single incident during the German bombing campaign against Britain. The tragedy took place during an
