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Sunday Independent, 30 March 1913, 3

The Dublin Sunday Independent has the following brief account of the phantom airship or aeroplane seen at Galway last week:

AIRSHIP OVER GALWAY

Several persons in Galway state that they saw an aeroplane over that city on Wednesday night [26 March 1913] at about 8.15. A man named M'Avoy, coachman to Mr. B. Parkes, said it was about 180 feet from the ground.

Unsurprisingly, this adds nothing to yesterday's much longer account in the Connacht Tribune -- and the latter had Conroy for M'Avoy and B. Parks for B. Parkes, presumably the correct versions as Galway is in Connaught.

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After an absence of more than a week, a mystery airship has been seen again, this time in Galway, Ireland. The Connacht Tribune's report gives a sense of the debates surrounding the 'nocturnal apparition' (p. 4):

Was it an aeroplane or a kite? That is the question that is troubling the minds of the people of Galway since a report became current that an airship had been seen over the city on Wednesday night [26 March 1913]. Many people were startled by the rumour, and drew highly imaginative pictures of a German invasion, evidently an echo of the recent airship scare in England. Others less inclined to sensationalism discredited this view, and say the cause was nothing less prosaic than a kite flown by some college boys. Those who actually saw the aerial visitor, however, are certain that it was an aeroplane, though whence it came and whiteher [sic] flown again, who knows.

'About half a dozen people saw the alleged airship, which had disappeared about an hour later.' One of the witnesses, 'Mr. Conroy, who is employed as coachman by Mr. B. Parks', spoke to the Tribune's correspondent:

'I was coming from the house,' he said, 'and walking along the new line about 8 p.m., when I heard two young lads shouting, "Look at that thing in the air." Glancing up, I saw a large dark body, as high in the air as the College clock (180 feet). Mr. Roycroft then came along and he said it looked like an aeroplane.' 'How did it appear to be moving?' asked the reporter. 'It would go straight for about a hundred yards and then turn round,' said Conroy.

Another witness was 'Mr. Hanly, hall porter at Galway Workhouse', who said that

it had wings like the planes of an aeroplane. When he saw it, he noticed its peculiar motion, from side to side for a distance and then it would stop. That was about 8.15 p.m., and there was a south-easterly wind blowing. There was no light attached to the aerial 'apparition.'

So maybe it's a mystery aeroplane instead.

It's possible that both a mystery airship and a mystery aeroplane have been seen in Russian Poland. The Dundee Courier, the Aberdeen Journal, and the Manchester Courier all carry the Reuter's report from St Petersburg, but the latter's is by a small margin the most detailed (p. 7):

A telegram received here from Kielce (Poland) says that an airship from Austria to-day [28 March 1913] flew over the Vistula into Russian territory, and was followed half an hour later by an aeroplane. The frontier guards fired at the aeroplane, which at once returned towards Austria.

With more information, it could well turn out that there was no mystery about these aircraft at all.

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Robert Bollard. In the Shadow of Gallipoli: The Hidden History of Australia in World War I. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2013. Focuses on the Australian home front, in particular the growth of dissent which culminated in 1917 with the Great Strike and the second anti-conscription campaign. The final chapter looks at industrial and military unrest as peace returned. It does seem to more or less skip over 1918, which I noted in my 1918 article seems to be a common feature in the historiography. 1918 wasn't as eventful as 1917, certainly, but it deserves more attention than that. In other words I wish this book was longer!

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Judging from the report in the Western Gazette, Captain Faber, Conservative MP for Andover, evidently is not convinced by the letter he received from the Prime Minister downplaying the mystery airship visits, for in a speech to his constituents at Weyhill in Hampshire he invoked them as a counterargument to the War Minister's downplaying of airships in general (p. 11; above):

Turning to the question of airships, Captain Faber said that Germany and France were spending brains and millions of money on these ships, but whilst this was so, our incurable optimist said airships were of no use to us. Had we in this country a monopoly of brains? Were the airships lately over Sheerness and Grimsby of no use?

Faber ridiculed Colonel Seely's suggestion that 'he had a gun to defend these shores from airships':

Was he going to have a gun every half-mile all round England, Scotland, and Wales, ready loaded, with a man always there to shoot? For it must be remembered that an airship travelled at the rate of sixty miles an hour.

He claimed that German experiments had anyway shown that 'three hits from below made but little difference [...] If the wound was inflicted at the top of the airship, it would be different and dangerous'. As for Seely's idea that 'airships were no good at night, because they could not see',

Had he forgotten the bright lights of London and Liverpool, which were visible for many miles from above the earth, and the frightful consternation that would be caused by explosives dropped at night over any big town?

Faber also has some interesting information about one 'foreign airship' (presumably German, though why he doesn't say so is unclear) in particular, contained 'in a letter in his possession from an absolutely reliable source -- from a passenger in this very airship'. It 'covered 1,600 miles without a break in twenty-nine hours' just 'the other day', and is 'about half the length of the Mauretania, had a crew of twenty-eight officers and men, and cooking, dining, and sleeping rooms'. It also has advanced camouflage and navigational technology:

They could cover themselves at any moment with vapour cloud to stop dectection [sic]; they were always surrounded by prepared covering that prevent reflection, so that they could not be photographed; they carried maps that were unrolled by the steersman, showing all the country they travelled over. Goetz, the man who invented the Goetz lens, had contrived a patent which, with mirrors pointing downwards from either end, would record most accurately and minutely the survey of the country over which they passed. There were thirty-eight of these airships ready, and thirty on order. He gave these few details concerning foreign airships to open the eyes of the country to the menacing danger threatening us. (Cheers.)

The Gazette also carries a notice about the wreck of the Ersatz Z I over a week ago, noting that it was 'the "fly-by-night" monster airship which is supposed to have recently visited England and created a scare' (p. 5).

The word 'scareship' appears in an article in the Manchester Courier attacking complacency on the airship issue on the part of Liberals as a generic term rather than one referring to phantom airships specifically. The Radical press is accused of having

substituted the word scareship for airship, they regarded all our accurate information on airships capable of discharging tons of explosives as a figment of the imagination.

The Government is described as 'until recently, case-hardened sceptics to whom "airships" and "scareship" are synonymous terms', while Seely's bizarre idea about airships not being able to see anything if they can't be seen is described as 'This is precisely the sort of reason which appeals irresistibly to the people who confound an airship with a "scareship," but it is inexcusable levity in a Minister of War' (p. 7). The Courier's larger argument is that

Aerial navigation has passed from the realms of imagination. Germany, by her splendid enterprise, has so developed the airship that the countries of the world must alter their whole methods of defence. The war of the future will be fought in the air. Diplomacy or bartering between nations succeeds or fails in proportion to the defensive forces possessed by those nations. And the coming of the airship affects no other country so vitally as Great Britain.

What is needed is 'an Aerial Budget, with proper and adequate provision for our aerial needs', and what is needed for that is 'a great public agitation', and so the Courier calls upon 'the Aerial League, the Navy League, and those other bodies interested to press forward the campaign'.

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Dellschau 1969

The art of Charles Dellschau has been receiving some attention lately, thanks to the recent publication of a book about his work. Dellschau, who produced thousands of strange and wonderful watercolours, drawings and collages in Houston, Texas, between about 1899 and 1922, is significant as an early outsider artist, but he is mainly of interest to me for two things. Firstly, his subject matter: his artwork is filled with strange flying machines (balloons? airships? aeroplanes?) intermingled with press clippings about aviation. Secondly, his overarching narrative: that his artwork records the activities of the Sonora Aero Club, a secret group of airminded inventors who actually created and flew the aircraft he depicted in California in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a beguiling idea, and some of Dellschau's admirers have tried to find out whether it is actually true (such as Pete Navarro, who is largely responsible for rescuing Dellschau's work). The Atlantic describes it as 'The Amazing Story of an Airship Club That Might Never Have Existed', as though we should be surprised if it had not. But it seems abundantly clear to me that we can in fact say that it pretty much definitely never existed. There is no evidence for the Sonora Aero Club that does not appear in Dellschau's artwork, but plenty against it elsewhere in the historical record.
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Aberdeen Daily Journal, 22 March 1913, 5

Here's a rarity these days: an actual phantom airship report, from the Aberdeen Daily Journal (p. 5):

About a quarter past nine o'clock on Thursday night [20 March 1913] a 'phantom airship' was seen hovering above Glasgow. To a eye-witness, it appeared at first to be a star of unusual magnitude and brilliance. After watching the object for about ten minutes, however, during which it moved rapidly to the north-west, he was convinced that it was not a star, and, drawing the attention of three other gentlemen, they also observed it for a considerable time, and came to the conclusion that it was an airship of some description. During a period of fifteen minutes it three times disappeared for about two minutes each time, and the watchers formed the opinion that it was being manœuvred in a circular course. Occasionally it appeared to be a balloon with a car underneath, and this impression was strengthened by what seemed to be the rays of a searchlight streaming from the car. At intervals for about three-quarters of an hour the object was plainly visible, and ultimately it disappeared in a northerly direction. The atmosphere was clear, and the gentlemen were satisfied that the moving object was some form of balloon.

No other paper picks up the Glasgow story. The Leitrim Observer, for some reason, sees fit to choose this day to inform its readers that 'the airship scare at Grimsby' has been put to an end by the discovery of a box kite used by hoaxers, though most other newspapers reported this more than two weeks ago (p. 7).
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Debate on the Army Estimates continued in the House of Commons yesterday. The Conservatives recovered their composure after Seely's unsettling openness, and set about undermining his reassurances that Britain's aerial defences are in safe hands. Taking the lead was Arthur Lee, a former Army officer and later Civil Lord of the Admiralty. The Times reports that Lee disputed Seely's contention that 'the large airship was not required for military purposes', arguing that 'imperfect as they were [...] they had a radius of action of over 1,200 miles, which would enable them to come from the Continent and cruise all over these islands and return' (p. 8):

They were able to drop a weight approximating one ton, and the moral effect, at any rate, that would be produced in this country when in the throes of mobilization by these vessels cruising over our mobilization centres, dockyards, magazines, and even the House of Commons (laughter) could be easily imagined.

Lee also took Seely to task for his belief that shooting airships down with guns would be quite easy:

The Zeppelins, painted a light grey, were practically invisible against an ordinary grey sky at about 5,000ft. The right hon. gentleman also said that at night they could not see us, but he had been informed that a dockyard working with lights at night made a plainer target than it did in the daytime. (Hear, hear.)

It was at this point that Lee made an oblique reference to phantom airships:

The question was, who was to shoot? And he confessed that he, as an ordinary peaceable citizen, did contemplate with some foreboding the possibility of Territorial artillery being called out for night practice at the planet Venus. (Laughter.)

The Manchester Courier, one of the few other papers to include this passage in their summary of Lee's speech, puts it this way (p. 8):

For his own part, he contemplated with some anxiety the prospect of the Territorials being called out to indulge in night practice at the planet Venus as she hung low on the Western horizon. (Laughter.)

Here he seems to be using the idea of phantom airships to ridicule the Government's aerial navigation regulations, suggesting that they would cause false alarms and possibly endanger the public. There is also probably a criticism here of the Territorials, a Liberal innovation which Conservatives largely discounted in favour of conscription or at least universal military training -- Lee was a former officer in the Volunteers, the militia which the Territorials replaced. Still, it's a bit odd to see a Conservative mocking mystery airships; usually that's the Liberal way.

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Daily Mirror, 20 March 1913, 4

Seely's statement of the Army estimates will have done little to assuage the doubts of Bonar Law and Massy regarding the Government's unsoundness on aviation, since he announced no new expenditure beyond that already announced. However, in its fullness and its frankness it appears to have disarmed the Opposition, at least for now. The part dealing with aviation has attracted the most interest in the press, for as the Dublin Freeman's Journal says, 'Usually the debate on the Army Estimates is the dullest of the year', but this time there was 'scope for the exercise of the imagination. What of the peril of the air?' (p. 7) The Journal's parliamentary correspondent suggests that Seely's speech was intended to puncture the recent hysteria about airships (though this appears to be their own interpretation, not supported by Seely's own words as quoted):

First he explained how the airship panic had been allowed to grow. Both the Admiralty and the War Office had been hard at work, but they have not advertised. Not only so, but he paid a tribute to the Press of the country for assisting them to work in secret.

Briefly, the Army now has 123 trained pilots and 101 aeroplanes, among them 'the most efficient aeroplane in the world'. It 'does not favour the monster airship of the Zeppelin type', but its three small airships 'have the advantage of being portable' and 'can be taken to pieces and sent abroad with an expeditionary force'. Seely went on to say that

The Zeppelin need not be feared. The difficulty of hitting a target in the air, moving at an unknown speed at an unknown height, has been solved completely. Any idea of an airship hovering over a battlefield or over a defenceless country must be abandoned.

Mr. Rowland Hunt tried to come to the rescue of the dumb-founded Opposition. 'How is it to be done at night?' he asked, only to be reminded that if the airship could not be seen it could not see a target to fire at below.

Well might the Opposition have been dumb-founded by such an argument. But Seely's attempt to dispel 'The Fear of the Zeppelin' can only be strengthened by the news from Germany that the military airship Ersatz Z I was wrecked at Karlsruhe yesterday, breaking in two from a gale. According to the Daily Mirror (p. 4; above):

The Ersatz Z 1, the newest Zeppelin airship, adds Reuter, was the ship supposed to have made the surreptitious trip to England about a month ago at the time of the airship 'scare'.

A number of other newspapers include this detail in their report, including the Dundee Courier, the Irish Times, the Liverpool Courier and both the Manchester Courier and the Manchester Guardian.

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History Australia, the journal of the Australian Historical Association, has accepted my article 'Dreaming war: airmindedness and the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918' for publication in the August 2013 issue. This is the second time my blogging to conference paper to peer-reviewed article workflow has borne fruit. I stumbled across the scare nearly two years ago, became curious, and started digging in the National Archives of Australia about six months later. Once I was convinced there was something to the topic, I proposed a talk for the AHA's 2012 conference, and when that was accepted started blogging around the material intensively (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). With some help from the AHA/CAL writing workshops, the AHA National Writing Cluster pilot, and of course the article's referees, I can now (well, soon, anyway) say that I'm an Australian historian in both senses of the term!

My plan is to use this article as the foundation for a larger project on mystery aircraft scares. Ultimately this could embrace scares in Australia, Britain (the next and current phase), New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the United States, and maybe even beyond. To do this right will involve archival research and so at least some funding from somewhere. Because there's little existing historiography on mystery aircraft to draw upon, my idea is to use this article to show that the topic is a solid one which is worth further research, and to suggest where I'm going with it. Ideally this project would lead to a book, but even if it doesn't work out that way I'll at least get a few articles out of it. For now, getting an article on the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918 out there is a good start.

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Only one or maybe two references to phantom airships appear in today's papers, both more or less in passing. The Manchester Guardian reports on a speech made by Andrew Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservatives, at Manchester's Free Trade Hall last night, and in so doing made the following sardonic comment (p. 7):

It was not, he assured us, a time for party feeling. [Was] there not a war in the Near East; were not armaments increasing abroad with feverish rapidity; was not our food supply a mere mouthful; were not airships darkening the sky? -- certainly it was no time for party feeling; rather was it the time for a Conservative Government without any further delay.

This could be merely a metaphorical allusion to the increase in aerial armaments rather than a reference to actual airships actually darkening the actual sky. The Guardian is of course politically opposed to Bonar Law and so wants to make him seem foolish. In fact the text of his speech, which apparently is given in full, does not refer to airships directly and only has the following on aviation (p. 8):

Now, finally, consider what has happened in regard to aviation. -- (Cheers.) I do not profess to be an expert about it, but no one who is following what is happening in the world can doubt that the development of that science has altered the whole strategical position of every country in the world. Nobody knows what the effect of it may be, but nobody can doubt that the effect of it may be to seriously threaten our navy, to seriously endanger our position. This Government beset with their party tactics have ignored this question. They have lagged far behind, and now even if they try, and I doubt if they will try, it may be too late to make up the ground which has so carelessly and so thoughtlessly lost.

Part of the context for Bonar Law's remarks on defence is that 'To-morrow [i.e. today] in the House of Commons there will be a discussion on the state of our army'. This discussion, or rather the debate on Colonel Seely's introduction of this year's Army Estimates, is also the occasion for an article in the Daily Express which rather prejudges matters with its title 'SHALL WE BE BETRAYED?' (p. 4). The author is Colonel H. S. Massy, C.B., F.R.G.S., vice-chairman of the Aerial League. Massy is alarmed because it has already been announced that the Estimates currently provide only 'half a million to aviation, plus a small and not easily ascertainable sum in the Navy vote':

Those of us who are alive to Great Britain's imminent danger of aerial invasion and defeat, still -- perforce -- cherish hopes that when the Estimates are formally introduced to-day we shall find a large sum forthcoming to supplement the amount already announced. As the last chance of all, surely there must be a supplementary estimate in contemplation!'

Massy says that while £500,000 might be 'well enough for bricks and mortar, even perhaps for pay', to gain 'the unbuyable experience which is the real gap between the German aerial forces and our own [...] will cost us at least a million pounds to acquire'.

The Government may dismiss all this as vague. Yet we have seen Germany's fleets of dirigibles ever growing. We have seen only too clearly that they can, at will, sail over our shores.

Massy was a signatory to the Aerial League's memorial calling for £1 million to be spent on aerial defence which also invoked the mystery airship scare as a justification, but he appears to go further here by asserting that the airships were real and that they were German.