Erik Larson. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. Brunswick and London: Scribe, 2015. Over 200 successful transatlantic crossings, but get sunk just one time and nobody remembers that. Mainly a narrative history but there’s nothing wrong with that from time to time. Also, like the next book, it was free (thanks, Richard!) Lynn […]
I ended the previous post in this series with the tease: In a final post, I will discuss what [Alban] Roberts called his airship, and what it might mean. That was over two months ago! I think it’s time to finally reveal the answer to this question. Errol Martyn, who has written what must be
F. G. Brown. Air Navigation Based on Principles and Methods applicable also to Sea Navigation. Sydney and London: Angus & Robertson, 1940. Teaches the same methods successfully used by P. G. Taylor over the Indian Ocean in June 1939! A useful reminder for the non-pilot (i.e. me) of just how much maths is involved in
Earlier this week I had my first article published in The Conversation, on the actual original context for the Keep Calm And Carry On poster, as opposed to the assumed original context. The Conversation is a great platform for academics to get their work and ideas out to the public, and to provide expert analysis
Michael North and Davy Burnaby. ‘Lords Of The Air’. Sydney: D. Davis & Co., 1939. Thanks, Bart! Frank H. Shaw. Outlaws of the Air. Glasgow: The Children’s Press, 1927. Thanks again, Bart! Shaw was a former naval officer who was also a prolific writer of war stories and science fiction aimed primarily at boys. This
People are nice. At the AHA today, I bumped into Bart Ziino, who gave me a present: the sheet music for a 1939 ballad called ‘Lords Of The Air’. I’d not heard of it before, though I’ve probably heard it before as it was played in several episodes of Dad’s Army. You can listen to
Garry Campion. The Battle of Britain, 1945-1965: The Air Ministry and the Few. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. The Battle as propaganda during the war (most of the book) and memory afterwards. Includes such topics as the ‘battle of the barges’ and Churchill’s ‘The Few’ speech (Campion still thinks The Few referred to Fighter Command but
The Australian airship of New Zealander Alban Roberts seems to have had only three outings, all in 1914. The first of these was a tethered test at the Sydney Agricultural Showground on 23 June, in which the envelope was filled with hydrogen, united with the nacelle, and ‘dragged into an open space, to undergo its
Simon Bradley. The Railways: Nation, Network and People. London: Profile Books, 2015. A social history of the British railway. Trains ain’t planes, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about this book. Keith Lovegrove. Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet. London: Laurence King, 2013. A fun little book about 20th century airline design, from advertising
Australia has never had much to do with airships. In recent decades you might be able to catch a glimpse of an advertising blimp or a camera drone. You have to go back many decades to find anything else, and what you do find didn’t amount to much. There would have been airship bases in
