An Australian view of the 1913 phantom airship scare in Britain, from the Sydney Globe, 8 March 1913, p. 7: A scare was created in England last week by the reported appearance of a mysterious airship at night over the East Coast. Two residents of Ipswich separately saw the searchlight of the airship, and one […]
David Clarke. How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth. London: Aurum Press, 2015. Clarke is a journalist and academic who has also worked with the National Archives on the declassification of Britain’s official UFO files. Here he takes a wider view, providing a social history of ufology (a subject he has
The Australasian Association for European History is, by widespread acclaim, the best conference series ever, and so I’m pleased to report that I will be speaking at the next one, to be held in July at the University of Newcastle. The title of my talk is ‘Zeppelinitis: constructing the German aerial threat to Britain, 1912-16’,
Blaine R. Pardoe. Never Wars: The US Plans to Invade the World. Fonthill: 2014. NB: ‘Plans’ is a noun, not a verb! This is a summary and analysis of various war plans made by the United States between the 1900s and the 1940s, from the Azores to Mexico. Two versions of War Plan Red, war
At 10:45am on 25 April 2015, a RAAF Hornet (possibly a Super Hornet) flew 500 feet over my house. Ordinarily my response to something like this would be: COOL. But this day was a bit different, because it was, of course, Anzac Day; and not just any Anzac Day, but the long-anticipated centenary of the
For my twelfth (and last?) contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, I spoke about what was undoubtedly the most important battle to take place in late April 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres in Flanders. The reason why this was so important is because it opened with the first successful, large-scale poison
David Payne sent me this great photograph of Malaya XV Cheon Teong, Ngoh Bee, a B.E.2c which was donated to the British war effort as part of the Imperial Aircraft Flotilla I blogged about last year. David’s grandfather, Arthur Chapman, is in the cockpit; he was an engineer at Shorts on the Isle of Sheppey,
In my eleventh contribution to ABC New England’s Road to War series, I took another look at how the economic war at sea was working out. My particular focus this week was the sinking of the Dutch freighter Medea (above), the first neutral casualty of Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign. I also discussed the difficult position
I found this pro-disarmament poster on eBay (at US$1985, I won’t be buying it!) The text reads: THE TRANSPORT OF THE FUTURE. FOR WHAT? DEATH AND DESTRUCTION OR FRIENDSHIP AND PEACE Abolish All War Aeroplanes This is the seller’s own description: An incredibly rare original vintage anti-war poster circa 1938 in fine condition, archivally mounted
For my tenth contribution to the Road to War series on ABC New England today, I discussed how the mutual naval blockades between Britain and Germany were becoming more total. In this week in 1915, Britain extended its blockade of Germany; the German unrestricted submarine blockade began to sink greater numbers of ships, including one
