The editorial cartoon from the Melbourne Argus of 9 December 1941, the issue which reported the Japanese landings in Malaya and air raid on Pearl Harbor. I guess it’s nice to know I can still be surprised, though, of course, there’s really no reason why I should have been.
Here are a couple of interesting but spurious claims about new weapons from 1939, which I’ve come across in my recent reading. The first is from the Melbourne Argus of 19 January 1939. It’s very brief, no more than a simple statement that the Soviet Union has announced that it has developed a death ray.
Last year I wrote a post in which I tried to work out the identity of Neon, the author of an eccentric but popular diatribe against aviation entitled The Great Delusion (1928). I concluded it was ‘probably’ Bernard Acworth, and not his third cousin (by marriage) Marion Acworth, as is usually suggested. Giles Camplin kindly
That’s it for the phantom airship scare of 1909. It’s been interesting for me, as I haven’t looked closely at this material since I did my 4th year thesis some time ago (the 1913 scare made it into the PhD, but not 1909). It didn’t last very long, only a couple of weeks. At first,
Punch today has a number of phantom airship items (p. 379). They’re quite amusing (to me, at least) and, in ironic vein, sum up the scare quite well. There’s pride … We are getting on at last. In phantom airships Great Britain is now facile princeps. … fear … Meanwhile, some surprise has been expressed
The new Fortnightly Review (actually a monthly, of course) is out today. Each issue opens with a review of ‘Imperial and foreign affairs’, which is usually written by J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer and a figure of great influence in Conservative politics. Assuming that it is he who penned this Review‘s review, Garvin
No scareships today. But the Standard carries a short article (p. 3) which shows how the airship menace could lie at the nexus of propaganda, advertising and entertainment. This summer’s weekly Brock’s Benefits, a free fireworks display produced by Brock’s Fireworks at the Crystal Palace, will present ‘a scene of an invasion drama of a
Last year I was interviewed by Dan Vergano, science reporter for USA Today, for an article he was writing for Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine on the 1909 phantom airship wave. It’s finally been published, in the July 2009 issue, and can also be read online. It’s a lively and engaging overview of the episode, and
This week’s issue of Flight carries a short piece about ‘Phantom airships and scare headlines’ (p. 318). It’s scornful of the credulity of ‘a certain section of the Press’, since ‘it was evident from the very first that either a practical joke was being played or that a bold advertising scheme was on foot’. The
There was nothing about phantom airships in yesterday’s papers. Nor is there anything in today’s, for that matter. But there is a curious story in the Globe concerning the ‘Wokingham airship’ (p. 11): A mysterious and closely-locked shed near the large public school at Wokingham has for some time past given rise to rumours of
