Any provincial newspaper with pretensions to quality features a regular column from its (usually anonymous) London correspondent which offers a mixture of political gossip and analysis as well as anecdotes of life in the capital and other, less classifiable tidbits. Today’s ‘Our London correspondence’ column in the Manchester Guardian, for example, previews the coming week […]
Two new airship reports today. First, from the Liverpool Echo (p. 6, above): Between eight and half-past eight last night [7 February 1913] at least a dozen people in London-road, Northwich, observed a bright light in the sky, and were emphatically convinced that it proceeded from an airship. Rays seemed distinctly to emanate from the
The provincial press is still catching up with the South Wales mystery airships today. In fact, most of it still catching with from the sightings from the weekend — the Exeter Western Times (p. 6) and Lichfield Mercury (p. 2) have versions of the article published in the Standard on Monday about the airship seen
Today is another big day for phantom airships in terms of press coverage. They are mentioned in at least four big London dailies as well as two major and three minor provincial dailies. The reason is yet another airship report from South Wales, where it was seen by many people last people. How many? Well,
The Manchester Guardian has a summary (p. 5, above) of the weekend’s airship sightings in South Wales (which is also published in the Derby Daily Telegraph, p. 3). The Guardian repeats the suggestion, made in the Standard and the Globe yesterday, that ‘the craft belongs to someone in Devonshire or Somersetshire, and that experimental flights
No less than three new phantom airship reports in today’s papers: two from South Wales, which is fast becoming scareship central, and one from Croydon in the south-east of England. To take the last airship first, as the Daily Express says, ‘This is the first time that it has been reported so near London’ (p.
‘The Passing Show’, a regular political commentary in the Dublin Sunday Independent, today takes note of the airship mystery (p. 6). It begins in a somewhat lighthearted fashion: The ‘phantom airship’ scare is again occupying the attention of the British public, and, as usual, giving the anti-German section of the said B.P. food for grave
Flight mentions the mystery airships in its editorial comment today, though only briefly and somewhat disparagingly. By the same token, it is quite happy to make use of them. The actual topic, inspired by the Daily Telegraph, is ‘Our aerial fleet’ (p. 107). It begins by claiming that in ‘the matter of our aerial defences
The current issue of Wartime, the official magazine of the Australian War Memorial, has an article by me on the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918. I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out — it’s beautifully illustrated and put together. The theme of the issue is ‘air warfare’, which I imagine may be of
The Daily Express and the Standard both carry articles today trying to make sense of the phantom airship sightings, each framed very differently. The article in the Express begins by asking (p. 5; above): Is a German airship making flights by night over England? That is a question which is being asked by many people
