Civil defence

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At about 5.20pm on Friday, 29 July 1938, hundreds of people saw a mysterious aeroplane diving from high over Hobart. According to Pegasus, the Hobart Mercury's aviation correspondent,

A large crowd collected near the corner of Liverpool and Murray streets, and traffic was impeded. The machine descended to a comparatively low level, yet not low enough to enable the identification numerals to be read. It was a grey biplane, larger than a Gypsy Moth.

As the watchers were preparing to rush for cover to avoid the expected crash, the machine sheered away and disappeared in the evening mists towards the south-west.1

Some observers thought that they could see the aeroplane's navigation lights.2 Engine sounds ('described as having a peculiar note') were heard in the posh Sandy Bay area (just southwest of Hobart's centre) soon thereafter, and a single-engined aeroplane was heard over Campania (20 miles to the north) by Dudley Ransom, pilot and owner of a private aerodrome, at 7pm.3 Enquiries at Tasmanian and Victorian aerodromes found no aircraft aloft that evening.4 Nor, apparently, did it belong to the RAAF.5
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  1. Mercury (Hobart), 4 August 1938, 13. [↩]
  2. Ibid., 30 July 1938, 9. [↩]
  3. Ibid., 4 August 1938, 13. [↩]
  4. Ibid., 30 July 1938, 9; Examiner (Launceston), 1 August 1938, 7. [↩]
  5. Mercury, 4 August 1938, 13. [↩]

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The RAF Displays held at Hendon between 1920 and 1937 were unique, in that no other air force attempted to project a vision of itself, its capabilities and its responsibilities in so public a way, on such a large scale and over such a long period. Of course, that's largely because there weren't many air forces around. Or rather, they did exist, but not independently of their nation's army and navy. Putting on such a big show was important for the RAF precisely because it was newborn: it needed to convince everyone (parliamentarians, journalists, the public, the other services, other nations) that it was necessary and/or that it was successful. Hendon seemed to have fulfilled this very well, judging by press attention and attendance numbers.

But viewed another way, the RAF Displays weren't unprecedented at all. Both the British Army and the Royal Navy had their own forms of public display. The Army had long performed in public, in fact, such ceremonies as trooping the colours, and the 19th century witnessed a huge growth in the popularity of military reviews, according to Scott Hughes Myerly 'the most popular and elaborate public manifestation of the military spectacle':

The action on the field consisted of evolutions of drill, musket volleys with blanks, and cannon salutes. Often a sham battle or mock, siege would be staged between two opposing units, or a bayonet or cavalry charge would be a part of the show.1

I'm not sure of the actual content of these mock battles, though the fact they they were performed during the Napoleonic Wars suggests an obvious ideological function. For its part, the Navy also developed fleet reviews into what Jan Rüger has termed 'a new form of public theatre'.2 This happened much later in the century, however, dramatically increasing in frequency after the review held for Victoria in 1887 on the occasion of her golden jubilee. By their nature, naval reviews afforded fewer opportunities for presenting narratives of actual combat. There were some, though, for example a 'mock-attack carried out by torpedo boats and submarines' at the 1909 Spithead review.3 Like the RAF later, and doubtless the Army before it, the Navy rather dubiously insisted that these were not mere spectacles but training for war.

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  1. Scott Hughes Myerly, '"The eye must entrap the mind": army spectacle and paradigm in nineteenth-century Britain', Journal of Social History 26 (1992), 105-31, at 106. [↩]
  2. Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 24. [↩]
  3. Ibid., 26. [↩]

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Mary Couchman, ARP warden

MRS. MARY COUCHMAN, twenty-four-year-old warden in a small Kentish village, sat smoking a cigarette in the wardens' post. She was resting between warnings.

Suddenly the sirens sounded again.

She saw her little boy, with two friends, playing some distance away.

The cigarette still in her hand, Mrs. Couchman ran out of the post. Bombs began to fall as she ran.

The children, Johnnie Lusher, aged four, Gladys Ashsmith, aged seven, and her four-year-old son Brian, stood in the street, frightened by the scream and thud of the bombs.

Gathering them in her arms, she huddled over them, protecting them with her own body.

Bombs were still thudding down only a short distance away.

There she crouched, to save the children from flying shrapnel and debris.

A "Daily Mirror" photographer was on the spot when the incident occurred.

He took this picture.

Afterwards, when the planes had passed over, he told Mrs. Couchman, "You are a brave woman."

"Oh, it was nothing. Somebody had to look after the children," was her reply.

Even allowing for journalistic exaggeration, it's a great photograph.

Source: Daily Mirror, 17 October 1940, 1 (though this copy of the photo is from In Focus).

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London defended. A stirring torchlight and searchlight spectacle

This is the programme for an air display called 'London Defended' which was part of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (in Wembley Stadium, in fact, before it became Wembley Stadium). I must admit to having missed this one (and its predecessor in 1924), but it sounds like it was comparable to the longer-lived Hendon pageant. Here's the description from Wikipedia, which is based partly on the above programme (original research much?):

From May 9 to June 1, 1925 No. 32 Squadron RAF flew an air display six nights a week entitled "London Defended" Similar to the display they had done the previous year when the aircraft were painted black it consisted of a night time air display over the Wembley Exhibition flying RAF Sopwith Snipes which were painted red for the display and fitted with white lights on the wings tail and fueselage. The display involved firing blank ammunition into the stadium crowds and dropping pyrotechnics from the aeroplanes to simulate shrapnel from guns on the ground, Explosions on the ground also produced the effect of bombs being dropped into the stadium by the Aeroplanes. One of the Pilots in the display was Flying officer C. W. A. Scott who later became famous for breaking three England Australia solo flight records and winning the MacRobertson Air Race with co-pilot Tom Campbell Black in 1934.

Firing blanks into the crowds -- those were the days!
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Let's turn now to Tolkien's The Hobbit and Smaug's attack on Lake-town (Esgaroth).1 In my PhD thesis I identified six characteristics of the ideal theory of the knock-out blow from the air: it would be a surprise attack, on a large scale, which would strike at the interdependent structures and civilian morale of its targets, and would wreak massive destruction with great speed. In the 1920s and 1930s, fictional and non-fictional predictions of victory through airpower would usually feature four or five out of these six. As I'll now show, The Hobbit has four: surprise, morale, speed, destruction. Of course, Lake-town isn't a modern, industrial society, nor is Smaug a technologically advanced enemy nation, so the fit isn't going to be perfect. It doesn't need to be, though.

There being so many editions of The Hobbit, it seems a bit pointless to cite page numbers here, but all my quotes come from chapter XIV, 'Fire and Water'.2
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  1. Cf. Janet Brennan Croft, War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien (Westport and London: Praeger, 2004), 112-3, for another analysis of military themes in this part of The Hobbit, suggesting that Bard's organisation of the defences is more suggestive of a modern infantry officer than a dark ages hero. [↩]
  2. The actual copy I'm using is a 1984 edition I read as a boy, a hardcover with beautiful illustrations by Michael Hague. [↩]

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A police constable bearing a warning notice

In July, 1917, a new scheme for warning the people of London of impending air raids was adopted. When enemy aircraft were approaching, policemen with a notice warning passers-by to "take cover" went out on bicycles, blowing their whistles to attract attention. When all danger had passed, Boy Scouts went round blowing bugles.

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Shortly after the Blitz began in earnest, Conservative MP Victor Cazalet wrote to the editor of The Times to urge that the RAF carry out reprisals against German cities for the 'indiscriminate bombing' of London.1 'The attack on the civil population is a military weapon', he argued. 'Can we possibly afford to give Germany a monopoly of this weapon?'

Cazalet's letter ignited (or, rather, re-ignited) a debate about the efficacy and morality of reprisals. Less contoversial, however, was the way he thought reprisals should be carried out:

We should, I suggest, designate some 12 German towns, and openly declare that unless this indiscriminate bombing ceases we intend to wipe out each night one of these German cities. Let each one of the towns selected anticipate when their turn may be coming. If they evacuate them all -- we will choose 12 others.

Cazalet was convinced that this would have 'a most striking and speedy effect upon the German population [...] Widespread bombing will quickly disillusion them', given their reliance on propaganda for knowledge of how the war was progressing.
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  1. The Times, 12 September 1940, 5. [↩]

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Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1941, 5

Hitler is on the move again! Yesterday, German airborne forces attacked Crete. According to the Manchester Guardian (5), Churchill informed the House of Commons of this news last evening, but his information was dated 3pm. However, 'at noon the situation was reported to be in hand'.

The attack began early in the morning with intense bombardment of Suda Bay, where there is anchorage for the largest vessels, and on aerodromes in the neighbourhood. The parachute troops, brought in troop-carriers and gliders, began to land, apparently with the object of capturing Maleme, an aerodrome on the Bay of Canea. In this they have so far failed. A military hospital which was seized was retaken by our troops under General Freyberg. From time to time the Germans bombed and machine-gunned anti-aircraft defences. Heraklion (Candia) was bombed, but no landings have so far been reported there.

The size of Allied forces on Crete is unknown, but two weeks ago it was reported that two Greek divisions had arrived there following the German conquest of the mainland, and there are also British and New Zealand forces present. King George of the Hellenes and members of the Greek government also managed to evacuate to the island.
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The Times, 17 May 1941, 4

Without even waiting for a response to Eden's warning, on Thursday RAF aircraft bombed three Vichy aerodromes in Syria, as The Times reports (4). According to RAF HQ, Middle East Command:

At Palmyra three Ju90s, two other German aircraft, and one Cr42 were machine-gunned. At least three of these aircraft were severely damaged and one other was burnt out.

General Dentz, the French High Commissioner in Syria, protested these raids, saying that they had killed a French officer. He further claimed that the German aircraft were there due to 'forced landings' and that his officials, 'according to the terms of the Armistice, procured their most rapid departure'. The diplomatic correspondent to The Times comments that Syria 'must now be counted an important arena of war'.
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Manchester Guardian, 16 May 1941, 5

There have been alarming developments in the Near East, reports the Manchester Guardian today (5). Syria, a Vichy French possession, is being used as a staging post for German aeroplanes on their way to Iraq, where an anti-British coup recently took place.

About thirty have already crossed Syria, it is authoritatively stated in Cairo. Their markings are believed to be French. It is understood that the 'planes are not troops-carriers but are transporting technicians.

According to the Associated Press most of the 'planes landing in Syria are understood to be bombers.

The paper's diplomatic correspondent says that

Germany is preparing to dominate Syria with a view to using it as a base for operations intended in the first instance to help Rashid Ali and the usurpers in Iraq who have made war on this country. At the same time Iran is being pressed to allow Germans to infiltrate there.

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