Rumours

1910s, Australia, Books, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Rumours

The war and Arthur Machen

It has happened before that while I’m focused on some research topic but read something seemingly unrelated, that unanticipated connections serendipitously appear between the two. In this case it was while reading a collection of short stories by Arthur Machen, an influential writer of supernatural horror who wrote his greatest, and most disturbing, works in

Patrie
1900s, Aircraft, Maps, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Rumours

The last flight of the Patrie

The Lebaudy-built Patrie, seen above, was France’s first military airship. A descendent of the Jaune, in 1906 and 1907 it carried out a number of successful proving and publicity flights, including one where it carried the prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, over Paris. Afterwards it was moved to its operational base near the fortress of Verdun.

1940s, Books, Interviews, Pictures, Rumours, Videos

The wooden bombs return

I received this request for assistance from Jean Dewaerheid, a Belgian writer who is working with Peter Haas and Pierre-Antoine Courouble to track down wooden bomb eyewitnesses: Three authors (from Belgium, Germany and France) have been working for years on a bizarre subject: the dropping of dummy wooden bombs on wooden airplanes. In order to

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