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VOTES FOR WOMEN

A common complaint1 about this blog is that it doesn't feature nearly enough pictures of airships. So here's one, a 27-metre long non-rigid which belonged to Henry Spencer, scion of a remarkably airminded family (sixteen aeronauts across four generations). Indeed, he built it with his brothers. The photograph was taken on 16 February 1909 and apparently shows the first ever powered flight from Hendon aerodrome, though neither Spencer nor his airship are mentioned in David Oliver's Hendon Aerodrome: A History (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1994).

But much more interesting than the airship itself, it must be said, is what it was used for. The clue is the slogan emblazoned on the side of the envelope: 'VOTES FOR WOMEN'. Spencer had hired his airship out as a propaganda platform to Muriel Matters, an Australian-born suffragette who was very active in the Women's Freedom League (a non-violent breakaway from the better-known WPSU). Matters had won some publicity the previous year by chaining herself to the grille of the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons. Her airship flight was also designed to make Parliament take notice of the suffragist cause: the new session was opening that very day and it was her intention to fly over Westminster and drop Votes For Women leaflets on it. In the end Spencer and Matters didn't make it there, having been blown off course into a tree in Coulsden, well to the south. Three decades later, Matters herself gave a wonderful account of her flight to the BBC, which can be heard online here. (Ignore the photo there, which is of the Army airship Baby.)

The photograph above is from a scrapbook belonging to an American women's suffrage organisation, so the message did travel quite some distance, albeit to a receptive audience; I couldn't find any mention of Matters' flight in a quick search of the British press. It took nearly a decade for the WFL's demand to be partially fulfilled. And it's nice to see that the part Matters played in using airpower for progressive causes is still remembered in her native South Australia.

  1. From me. [↩]

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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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Manchester Guardian, 12 May 1941, 5

Saturday night's heavy air raid on London damaged some of its greatest buildings. Parliament were hit hard: the House of Commons is 'wrecked', in the words of the Manchester Guardian today; Westminster Abbey is 'open to the sky' (5), though its structure is still intact. Other historic buildings were hit too. From The Times (4):

What some consider the most magnificent roof in the world -- that of Westminster Hall, with its soaring arches and sweeping beams of oak -- has been pierced by bombs, and damage has been done to the interior. The hall was started by William Rufus in 1097 [...]

Big Ben's face was blackened and scarred, but although the apparatus which broadcasts the chimes was for a time put out of action, the hands of the clock continued without interruption telling the time to Londoners.

The Deanery of Westminster, one of the best examples of medieval houses in England, has been destroyed [...]

The British Museum was set alight by a shower of incendiaries, which burnt through the roof and set fire to the back of the building [...] Fortunately most of the treasures had been removed to safety, and the damage was comparatively light.

Is it a sign of increasing indifference that the human cost of the raid is relegated to a few paragraphs at the end of the article, or is just that the destruction in the heart of London was something that could not be underplayed?
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Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1941, 7

Ten aircraft failed to return from Bomber Command's operations over Germany on Thursday night. Those losses are quite small in relation to the number of British aircraft involved in the raids on Hamburg and Bremen, between three and four hundred, 'certainly the largest number ever used in one night' according to page 7 of the Manchester Guardian.

Moon and weather favoured the attack, and the submarine and shipbuilding yards of both ports were heavily damaged. Pilots' individual reports speak of areas a mass of flames, in which it was impossible to distinguish separate fires, and of great explosions caused by our most powerful bombs being dropped into the heart of the fires.

The report in The Times (4) is more vivid and evocative, which seems to have inspired even the subeditor ('cities seared by fire').

In other industrial quarters of both towns there were widespread fires as well, and many other marks of devastation. At Hamburg a whole wharf was blazing as a single stick of bombs was seen to split open a row of buildings. Here smoke was rising to 10,000ft., and in another part of the town smoke rolled in black eddies and suggested the destruction of great stores of oil.

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The title of this post is something which Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris did not say. There are an uncountable infinity of things Harris didn't say, but this particular one is of interest because during the Second World War it was widely believed that he did say it, and was taken to represent his aims and the aims of Bomber Command. It's part of a propaganda broadcast made to the German people in Harris's name, telling them what Bomber Command had in store for them if they did not overthrow their Nazi leaders:

Soon we shall be coming every night and every day, rain, blow, or snow -- we and the Americans [...] We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end if you make it necessary for us to do so. You cannot stop it, and you know it.

You have no chance.

The broadcast was picked up in Britain too, translated and printed in the daily press. In his memoirs, Harris says that he never said any of it, or even approved it; he had agreed that his name could be used on leaflets to be dropped into Germany, but this had somehow mutated into a radio broadcast. As Harris pointed out, he couldn't even speak German. Having said that, he nowhere disavows the substance of the speech, only that it understated the 'pains and dire penalties' which were 'actually meted out' to the German people by Bomber Command.1 Nor was he able to disavow authorship during the war. So this speech, though false, was more or less accurate and accepted as such. As I'm always looking out for ways to explore attitudes towards strategic bombing, the episode of the speech not made by Harris seems worth looking at.
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  1. Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005 [1947]), 115. [↩]

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The Times, 2 January 1941, 4

The Mediterranean theatre of war has seen a lot of action in recent days, as these headlines from The Times (4) show. While the Italian outpost at Bardia is besieged from land, sea and air, British armoured units are approaching Tobruk, 70 miles to the west. On Monday night, Italian warships at Taranto were bombed by the RAF: '11 bombs were seen to burst around the target' (though without such striking success as attended the Royal Navy's raid last November). The Greek army is continuing its slow and stubborn advance, though 'the present line of Italian defence shows no clear sign of cracking'.
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Daily Mirror, 21 November 1940, 1

I was going to end this section of the post-blog with yesterday's post, but who could resist a front page like this? It's so emotive and manipulative. The scene itself is tragic enough: the mass burial and funeral of 172 men, women and children killed in the blitz on Coventry last Thursday night. Another seventy will be buried today. But to that the Daily Mirror adds (1) portentous capitalisation ('the Tragedy of Coventry'); (2) a rousing declaration ('WE SHALL REMEMBER!') combined with a graphic of Coventry in flames; (3) the archaic insults ('HUNS RAID', 'the Hun's massacre'). There's more on page 7, along with photographs of the open grave, and on the back page. The Mirror is milking Coventry for all it's worth. And who knows, maybe it's worth a lot.
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The Times, 14 November 1940, 4

British and Allied forces have been having a good week, at Italy's expense. The Italians lost Gallabat (in the Sudan), a division in the offensive against Greece and much of a convoy taking supplies to Albania. The greatest Allied success was the carrier strike against the Italian naval base at Taranto, which took place on Monday night (The Times, 4). Three battleships were severely damaged. Last night the First Lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander, told the nation via the BBC (and reported here on page 2) that whereas before the attack the Italian battle fleet had a numerical superiority in the Mediterranean, it is now inferior to the Royal Navy.

For reasons best known to themselves the Italians did not seek to exploit their superiority and they had remained immobile behind the defences of their harbour. Even that, however, had failed to protect them. Within their inglorious shelter the Italian battle fleet had suffered a defeat which could only have been redeemed in the public mind had that fleet shown itself willing to accept battle at sea.

The Italian News Agency has a somewhat different view of the air raid, calling the British account 'clap-trap' and a 'shameless fraud' (3):

If there had not been an urgent necessity to inject optimism into a depressed public opinion Churchill ought to have had the elementary prudence to study the Italian official communiqué of November 12, which said that only one unit was in any way extensively damaged, and added that there were no victims. It is evident that if the massacre of ships imagined by Churchill had really taken place there would have been a number of victims, unless we suppose that on board Italian warships there are no crews.

The truth is that 'the invincible British Navy has not yet scored a single success, however modest'. Who is telling the truth?
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Daily Mail, 7 October 1940, 1

'RAF PREPARING A GREAT NEW BOMBING OFFENSIVE', Daily Mail, page 1:

POWERFUL new R.A.F. bombers now being produced in great numbers and an amazing new long-range fighter are likely to be used, in the immediate future, for a greatly intensified bombing offensive over Germany.

Hitler's people can look forward to more than a taste of the medicine their Luftwaffe is administering over here.

'Shortest Raid. LONDON ALERT LASTS 20 MINS.':

LONDON had its usual air-raid warning half-an-hour than usual last night. It proved to be the shortest after-dark "Alert" since the blitzkrieg began, lasting barely 20 minutes.

And it was followed by the longest period of quiet.

'2-TONS OF BOMBS RAIN ON KRUPPS':

TWO tons of bombs were rained on the great Krupps arms works at Essen during a lightning high-altitude attack by the R.A.F. in Saturday night.

[...]

They started a trail of fire across Germany's oil plants and railway yards, blasting the docks in Holland, and set the French coast aflame from Dunkirk to Boulogne.

'Nazis Lose More Than They Kill':

LORD CROFT of Bournemouth, Under-Secretary for War, revealed yesterday:

"It is believed that ten days ago a single British submarine sent more German soldiers to their doom than all the British deaths caused by German airmen in the whole month of August.

[...]

"It is highly probable that far more German war factory workers have lost their lives than the total losses inflicted on our civilians from air attack."

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