FORETASTE OF THE FUTURE Of all the forms of gas used in the Great War, that which had the least disastrous consequences was “tear gas.” Its effect was to inflict temporary blindness on those who came in contact with it. This pathetic row of figures show men temporarily blinded in that way on the Western […]
Peter Williams. The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and Reality. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2012. This is one of those topics I should know more about, being a military historian and an Australian and all. Ordinarily I might be wary of a book with ‘myth and reality’ in the title, but it’s unlikely to be sensationalist
An article of mine has been accepted for publication in the September 2012 issue of the Australian Journal of Politics and History, to be entitled ‘”Bomb back, and bomb hard”: debating reprisals during the Blitz’. I’m very pleased with this for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s been a while since I last had an
I have been very remiss in not noting until now the posting of Military History Carnival #30 at Cliopatria. It’s a good one, as usual. The post I found most interesting this time is at Bring the Heat, Bring the Stupid (as it was last time, actually) on the US Linebacker II bombing offensive against
Charles Kingsford Smith was and remains Australia’s most famous pioneer aviator. Among his feats: the first trans-Pacific flight, in both directions in fact (1928, east to west; 1934, west to east); the first non-stop trans-Australian flight (1928); the first trans-Tasman flight (1928). It’s probably fair to think of him as the Australian Lindbergh in terms
WILL THEY BE A COMMON SIGHT? Officers of the St. Johns Ambulance Brigade, who, in their black and white uniforms, are familiar and friendly figures to Londoners, are now preparing for the possibility that grim and terrible duties may one day fall to their lot. A number of them have recently received instruction in a
Thirteen days ago, it was the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin, the first and most devastating Japanese air raid on Australia. In fact, there were two air raids on 19 February 1942: one from the same carrier task force which had attacked Pearl Harbor a little over two months previously, and another later
Well, not quiet so much as oddly obscure… In his Behind the Smoke Screen (1934), probably the most influential book written on the theory of a knock-out blow from the air, P. R. C. Groves related the following story of angry civilians attacking an RFC aerodrome after an air raid, because they felt they had
Peter Adey. Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. The title isn’t very revealing of its contents. But here’s a partial list of the topics covered: airminded youth groups such as the Air Defence Cadet Corps and the Skybird League (chapter 2), air shows including Hendon (chapter 3), the birth of aerial surveying (chapter
SUCH THINGS WILL HAPPEN In April, 1935, a Kentish Voluntary Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross Society conducted an air raid rehearsal. Here Red Cross men wearing box respirators and anti-gas clothing are rescuing a woman caught by gas in the open. With a heavy concentration of the deadly gases that modern chemists have
