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'The Passing Show', a regular political commentary in the Dublin Sunday Independent, today takes note of the airship mystery (p. 6). It begins in a somewhat lighthearted fashion:

The 'phantom airship' scare is again occupying the attention of the British public, and, as usual, giving the anti-German section of the said B.P. food for grave misgiving.

This is followed by a very brief résumé of the major sightings of the past four weeks: Dover, Cardiff, Liverpool, Aberystwyth and Manchester. Nothing new here except in the last case: the Manchester airship is said to have 'been seen by reliable witnesses' and those witnesses are said to number 'Many'. Which may not be very much but the previous reports were not very forthcoming on the subject of who did the reporting. No conclusion is offered, but there is a noticeable tilt in one direction:

This is serious enough; but far worse is the fact that the officers of the Aero Club state that the vessel cannot possibly be of British origin. There is no English airship which could cover the distance in the time suggested by its appearances, whereas, as is well known, the German Zeppelins are quite capable of doing so, or of crossing from Germany and returning without landing.

It's interesting that the Sunday Independent doesn't see fit to mention, or else doesn't know of, the airship seen at Newport, Co. Mayo, three weeks ago, which might suggest that it's not just the British public which is prone to seeing German airships. On the other hand, that incident is the only one from Ireland to have been reported so far.

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Flight mentions the mystery airships in its editorial comment today, though only briefly and somewhat disparagingly. By the same token, it is quite happy to make use of them. The actual topic, inspired by the Daily Telegraph, is 'Our aerial fleet' (p. 107). It begins by claiming that in 'the matter of our aerial defences we have at all times endeavoured to steer clear of alarmist tendencies', and to assume that the government was following 'a considered policy of awaiting developments until such time as it was wise to make a great forward move' rather than accusing it of 'improper procrastination'.

But there comes a time when it is necessary to talk plainly and to say the things that come uppermost in the mind after a close and careful study of the relative strength of our own and other nations' air fleets. That time has come now. We have waited to see the awakening, and we have seen nothing but a continued policy of discouraging apathy, which has left this country hopelessly behind its rivals, without an air fleet worthy of the name, and almost entirely at the mercy of the first aerial power which cares to launch its air squadrons on a mission of destruction across the North Sea.

Britain's policy amounts to little more than watching and waiting:

We play about with small dirigibles which are but of minor count for the purposes of serious war, while Germany rapidly and certainly builds huge craft, capable of taking the North Sea in their stride and which, if report is to be trusted, have already paid us visits by night. Not that we are inclined to take these reports too seriously, but the fact remains that even if German aircraft have not visited these shores it is beyond all question that there is nothing in the wide world, least of all British aircraft, to prevent them so doing whenever those directing them are inclined.

Nor should France's 'enormously strong air fleet', soon to number 'not less than five hundred aeroplanes in effective service, to say nothing of a respectable number of large dirigibles', be neglected:

True, France at the moment is our very good friend and ally, but political friendships are notoriously unstable, and even so, when did Great Britain have to depend upon her friends to supply her own obvious deficiencies?

It is rumoured that the forthcoming Army Estimates will include a provision for £1 million for aviation, but what if the rumours are wrong?

Is there any hope that the Parliamentary 'Supers' who draw their £400 per annum for walking through the lobbies obedient to the crack of the Party whip will rise up in their places and insist that the safety of the country shall take precedence of schemes of so-called social reform, which no one wants and which are frankly designed to catch the votes of the unthinking populace? We fear not.

The only bright lights are 'Mr. Joynson-Hicks, an indefatigable champion in the cause of aviation and an Aerial Defence group in the House, which has done excellent work in calling attention to the parlous state of our air service' (pp. 107-8). But they are isolated and have little influence. Therefore 'It is with something more than pleasure that we note that the Daily Telegraph has taken up this most vital question' (p. 108). Flight fully concurs, and has previously argued, that as a consequence of 'the policy of inaction',

the British aviation industry is dying. Abroad, one improvement follows another with disconcerting rapidity owing in every case to the researches and experiments of private firms. But it cannot be hoped that with our factories idle, with our expert designers and craftsmen dismissed and forced into other careers to make their livelihood, we can ever keep pace with, much less outstrip, foreign activity and improvement.

By the time Britain reaches the same conclusion as every other country, i.e. that it is necessary to equip the 'army with war machines of a number of different types, even at great cost [...] the aviation industry will have ceased to exist'. If nothing is done.

We repeat we are not alarmists, but we cannot view the position without [sic] anything but the gravest misgiving for the future. The political outlook is darker than it has been for many years, and we have it on record that in the opinion of one of our most distinguished soldiers that it is impossible to make successful war without having command of the air. And if war should come suddenly, we most certainly shall not have command of the air -- but the lamp-posts of Whitehall may have unfamiliar ornaments. And well might it be under the circumstances.

Looks like there's a scare coming.

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Wartime 61

The current issue of Wartime, the official magazine of the Australian War Memorial, has an article by me on the Australian mystery aeroplane scare of 1918. I'm very pleased with how it's turned out -- it's beautifully illustrated and put together. The theme of the issue is 'air warfare', which I imagine may be of interest to readers of this blog. For example, there's Richard Overy on the legal and ethical status of Bomber Command's campaign against Germany, Richard Frank on whether the Japanese should be considered victims of the atomic bombs, Greg Gilbert on the aerial aspects of the Dardanelles (okay, Gallipoli) campaign, and a lot more. You can read Lachlan Grant's article on 460 Squadron RAAF's daylight raid on Berchtesgaden for free, but for the rest you'll need to buy a copy from the AWM or from any good newsagent, or a few indifferent ones for that matter. Recommended, and not just because I'm in it!

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Daily Express, 31 January 1913, 5

The Daily Express and the Standard both carry articles today trying to make sense of the phantom airship sightings, each framed very differently. The article in the Express begins by asking (p. 5; above):

Is a German airship making flights by night over England? That is a question which is being asked by many people in view of the repeated reports of a mysterious night aircraft from various parts of the country.

And it closes by noting:

The Hansa can travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and has a range of 1,000 miles. It is about 500 miles in a straight line from Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, where the Zeppelins are kept as a rule, but there are airship garages further north in Germany, and the German coast is less than 500 miles from Manchester.

By contrast, the Standard opens with a less leading question (p. 7):

What is the mysterious air craft that has been seen half a dozen times at as many different points, hovering by night over English towns, during the past three weeks? Whence does it come, and where does it hide itself during the day?

It also is rather dismissive of the idea that the airships are German:

The somewhat alarming theory that it is a foreign airship is generally discounted. For a craft of this description to have made a voyage lasting three weeks without landing and being observed is held to be a sheer impossibility, while it is considered almost equally impossible that half a dozen separate visits, including all the places at which the the mysterious vessel has been reported, should have been made from abroad.

Another difference is that in the Standard's article, those who have 'generally discounted' the foreign airship theory are certain 'military and naval authorities', whereas the Express seems to be talking more about public opinion. Nevertheless, the Standard does admit that the mystery is 'greatly exercising the minds' of those authorities, and that 'In official and aeronautical quarters nothing is known -- or at all events nothing is admitted -- of the identity of the elusive airship'. It does offer an alternative to the German theory:

The suggestion is made that it belongs to an unknown inventor who has secretly built a new type of craft and is adopting this unusual method of stimulating interest in his invention as a preliminary to offering it to the War Office. Another theory is that it is not one airship, but two or more, which would account for its being seen at places as far apart as Liverpool and Aberystwyth within the same hour on Saturday evening last. As the crow flies it is some eighty miles between these two places, and it is in the highest degree improbable that an airship is in existence in this country capable of travelling this distance in an hour.

The suggestion that the airship is the invention of a local inventor was made (implicitly, at least) last week by the Manchester Guardian, but has not attracted much support until now.
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[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.]

I recently came across what appear to be two bad books from what are two good publishers. There's nothing particularly unusual about that -- these things happen, a lot of books get published on military history and they can't all be good. But it turns out that the author of these books is even more questionable than the content. I worry that, having got this far and established a track record, he will be able keep convincing publishers to look favourably upon his work.

The author in question is Frank Joseph, and the books are Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy's Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45 (Helion & Company, 2010) and The Axis Air Forces: Flying in Support of the German Luftwaffe (Praeger, 2011) -- the publisher's pages can be found here and here. I must admit to not having read them, so this is not a review. But enough is available on Google Books, here and here, to cast serious doubts upon Joseph's reliability, and these doubts are amply confirmed by reviews available elsewhere, for example by Richard Carrier in Global War Studies. I'll focus on Mussolini's War, though The Axis Air Forces appears to be pretty bad too -- I'll just mention here the blunt, unsupported claim from that an American experimental VTOL aircraft of the 1950s, the Convair XFY, 'had been built from Campini's original plans' (p. 31) for the Caproni Campini Ca.183bis, a planned 'futuristic Italian interceptor' with 'a highly innovative vertical takeoff and landing design' (p. 30). The only trouble is that, as far as I can tell, the XFY owed nothing to any Italian aircraft (though it did to a German one, the unbuilt Focke-Wulf Triebflügel), and the Ca.183bis was not a VTOL design at all, but a high-altitude interceptor of relatively conventional configuration (albeit with a Campini compressor, making it a crude jet). The only somewhat unusual feature they had in common seems to have been contra-rotating propellers, but they weren't actually all that rare. But on to Mussolini's War.
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Daily Express, 30 January 1913, 1

A new mystery airship report today, from a new part of the country -- 'the coast of Mid Wales' (Daily Express, p. 1; above):

An 'Express' correspondent at Aberystwyth states that it was seen by country people approaching the village of Chancery, a few miles south of Aberystwyth, at 8.25 on Saturday night [25 January 1913].

The movements of the airship were witnessed by a number of the villagers. At first it was headed for Cardigan Bay, but its searchlights, which swept the hills, evidently revealed the nearness of the sea, for it turned south and left in the direction of Carmarthenshire.

The Times carries the same report -- well, barring the reference to the Express (p. 12). The Express, however, also reveals its exasperation at the difficulty in reconciling the increasingly widespread phantom airship sightings to date (p. 1):

This is at least the fifth time this month that the mystery airship has been seen flying by night, yet no one has seen it rise or descend, and no one knows whence it comes or whither it goes:

On Tuesday the 'Express' reported that five persons declared they had seen it going over Liverpool 'between seven and half-past eight' on Saturday night last [25 January 1913]. Yet at 8.25 it was seen near Aberystwyth!

Exclamation mark! The Express doesn't try to explain how the airship could be seen at two places at the same time, but logically the choices boil down to: (1) there are two airships, or maybe more; (2) there is one airship, or maybe none. It summarises the previous sightings:

Dover, Jaunary [sic] 4.
Yarmouth, January 15.
Bristol Channel and Cardiff, January 18 [should be January 17].
Yarmouth, January 23.

And points out that like the airship or airships recently seen at Liverpool and near Aberystwyth, the ones reported at Dover and at Cardiff 'carried a light or lights'.
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Standard, 28 January 1913, 9

A somewhat atypical phantom airship report appears in today's newspapers. It's from the suburbs of one of the great cities, Liverpool. With a population of around three quarters of a million, Liverpool is more than three times the size of the biggest city to have previously reported a mystery aircraft, Cardiff. According to the Standard, (p. 9; above):

Several people report having seen a mysterious aircraft over the north of Liverpool on Saturday evening [25 January 1913] between seven and half-past eight o'clock. They say it was travelling at about 25 miles an hour, and that it carried a very brilliant light. Two members of the Liverpool Aviation School were out on Saturday afternoon, but did not leave the neighbourhood of the shore at Waterloo, and were not in the air at the time stated.

The Times has an equally brief account (p. 13), but it does provide some additional details: the report was made by 'A resident in the Clubmoor district', and 'There were five persons in the house at the time and they watched it for some time'. The Manchester Guardian says much the same (p. 6). Frustratingly, the local Liverpool Echo appears to carry no news article about the Clubmoor aircraft today, even though it does mention it in the leading article (p. 4):

If rumour speaks true, England has already once, if not twice, been invaded by mysterious ships of the air that pass in the night.

Mention is made of a mysterious aircraft which passed over this district after dark on Saturday evening last.

The leading article itself is entitled 'Air power and sea power', and criticises the government for lagging in its efforts to build a British air fleet. It suggests that an airship scare might be just the thing: 'The scaremongers who have so often aired their fears and grievances in regard to the Navy might be pardoned a little activity directed into another and more needful channel'. Why more needful?

Germany has been left an easy first in possession of the huge dirigible airship, a craft which can cover vast distances in a short space of time, carrying sufficient implements of destruction to work considerable havoc on any particular point attacked. Naval and military experts have all these facts before them, and they can calculate how much of the threatened danger is real and how much only fancied. The public at home are none the less left with an uncomfortable feeling on every fresh announcement of a new move by some foreign Power for the strengthening of its aerial squadrons.

And, of course, 'The British fleet of dirigibles has practically no existence', the Admiralty preferring to rely on 'the hydroplane, whose range of operations is necessarily limited and which has but a small carrying capacity'. What is lacking 'to better secure our air power' is not 'volunteers of nerve and ability' but 'the necessary mechanical equipment'.
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Daily Express, 27 January 1913

The Daily Express reports (p. 7, above) on another mystery airship at Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast -- this time it was seen rather than heard:

Samuel Harris, who is employed at the corporation pumping station at the north end of town, states that a few minutes before midnight on Thursday [23 January 1913] he saw a long airship, with a cradle attached, travelling at a considerable height.

He states that it passed over his house and proceeded in a south-easterly direction over the sea. He estimates that it was travelling at between forty and fifty miles an hour, and is perfectly convinced that it was an airship.

Harris called his daughter out to see it, and she 'caught a glimpse of it as it was passing out of sight'.

The Express also notes that 'There are some incredulous people' (where? in Yarmouth?) 'who are loth to believe the stories of mysterious night airships'. Their explanation:

the noise which has been taken for that of the motor has really been caused by flocks of wild geese passing over Yarmouth.

Well, then.

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Norfolk News, 25 January 1913, 10

The Norfolk News, Eastern Counties Journal, and Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lynn Commercial Gazette, presumably universally known as the Norfolk News, today carries the usual paragraph about the Cardiff airship sighting. Unsurprisingly, it pays considerably more attention to the mystery aircraft heard locally at Yarmouth at midnight last week (above, p. 10). It reproduces Herbert Pertwee's letter to the rival Eastern Daily Press:

On Tuesday, January 14th, about midnight, I distinctly heard an aeroplane or airship pass over my house at a tremendous speed, and within three or four minutes after I heard it again, probably returning. I should like to know if anyone else heard it. Early on the previous Monday morning Mr. Walter Back heard one over Southtown. What are the Germans up to?

Note that the previous report had given the date as 15 January, not 14 January, but this discrepancy is easily explained by the time being midnight. Pertwee was interviewed by a representative of the press (what part of the press is not specified, so probably the Daily Press):

he noticed that the aeroplane had a very high-toned hum. There was no sound earthward at the time, all of it coming from above. The sound came towards him, passed away, and then returned, the airship apparently travelling at a very great speed. It was between midnight and 1 a.m. when he heard it over his house. His partner, Mr. Back, had mentioned to his son hearing a similar sound on the previous Monday morning [13 January 1913] before he met Mr. Pertwee. Mr. Back heard the sound between 2 and 3 a.m., and thought it might have come from a hydroplane. If it was anything of the sort Mr. Pertwee thinks it must have come from a considerable distance, otherwise if it had been in this district something must have been known of its movements.

The Norfolk News notes that after Pertwee's letter appeared in the Daily Press, 'several residents' have told its Yarmouth correspondent that 'they heard what they took to be an aeroplane pass over Yarmouth at about Tuesday midnight (14th instant)'. But it doesn't quote or name any of these other witnesses, instead reprinting another letter evidently from the Daily Press, written by 'Mr. F. W. Boulton, 20, Gordon Road, Southtown' relating to an incident a couple of months ago (so a few weeks after the Sheerness airship but maybe around the time it reached the press):

I was greatly interested on reading your report in this morning's issue of a supposed airship or aeroplane passing over Yarmouth, about the middle of November last [1912] I heard what I took to be an airship pass over Southtown. The time was about half an hour after midnight, and both my wife and myself distinctly heard a loud whirring, humming noise, which gradually diminished as though receding into the distance. As the time was about the middle of our herring fishing, it struck me on second thoughts that the noises might have come from a vessel in the harbour, although it appeared to be overhead, and became fainter and fainter as if getting further and further away. As I found nobody else seemed to have noticed the incident, after a bit I dismissed it from my mind, only to have it brought back afresh by reading Mr. Pertwee's communication in this morning's paper.

Both Pertwee and Boulton have used their local knowledge and contacts to assess what they heard. Pertwee seems to have inquired about local aircraft flights, or perhaps just assumed he would have heard of any. He and his business partner shared their experiences, and Pertwee took the initiative to write to a newspaper and ask if anyone else heard it as well. Clearly the sound, whatever it was, became the subject of gossip and rumour, with a number of people telling a reporter from another paper they had heard it too. Boulton also asked around, but finding that he and his wife were the only ones to notice anything decided not to worry about it. His thought that the sound might come from a herring trawler is reminiscent of the Dover Express's explanation for the Dover airship, though presumably it would be quite a familiar sound in a fishing port. None of the witnesses suggest that they have any familiarity with aircraft, but they seem reasonably confident in their ability to identify one by its sound -- well, it came from above, so what else could it be? Since Pertwee has inferred that the aircraft was not a local one, and given that it was flying in the middle of the night, to conclude that it was a German airship might be reasonable, though not a German aeroplane as he apparently has done. It's curious that none of the witnesses seem to have rushed outside to see if anything was visible, but perhaps the lateness of the hour explains that.

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Only recycled news today: the Yeovil Western Gazette, p. 2, and the Cambridge Independent Press, p. 5, reprint the paragraph about the Cardiff airship which circulated widely on Tuesday, while the Exeter Western Times, p. 11, reprints its own article on the Bristol lights from yesterday.

The Standard has a follow-up to the letter about lights in India it published over a week ago. A correspondence seems to have developed. Lewis Rice of Harrow writes in response to a Colonel Tillard's account (unseen) of 'the Nundy lights', 'the lights which are seen from the fine old fortress of Nundydroog in the Mysore State', p. 13:

After the first heavy fall of rain in the storms which precede the burst of the monsoon, these lights appear in the plains below, often stretching out in long lines like the street lamps of a city. The superstitious call them 'corpse candles' and other names. But they can be accounted for in a very matter-of-fact way.

Rice explains that the lights appear during the mating (or 'pairing') season of a species of termite, though these are not their direct cause. Rather it seems that the termites are a local delicacy, and it's the method used to trap them which is the explanation:

The lower orders of the villagers are not behindhand in their appreciation of the delicate morsels, and, in order to gratify their taste, form shallow basins of the earth round the white ant nests, in which they fix a branch of inferior sugar-cane and set it alight. The insects, allured by the light, fall in shoals into the basins, where they are retained by a sort of hencoop. In the morning the fragrant heaps are gathered up and roasted, to be eaten as curry. Such is the explanation of the Nundy lights.

Perhaps, though termite traps are probably not the solution to the present British airship mystery.