Chaz Bowyer. RAF Operations 1918-1938. London: William Kimber, 1988. There were more than you might think — enough to fill a 300-page book, anyway — mostly in the Middle East and on the North-West Front. Very well-illustrated (if you like aeroplanes, that is). Richard Knott. Flying Boats of the Empire: The Rise and Fall of […]
On 21 June 1938, Philip Noel-Baker MP moved a reduction of £100 in an amount being voted for Foreign Office salaries. This is a time-honoured way of starting an argument in the House of Commons (well, technically they are called debates): it allows the mover to get into the agenda an issue they consider to
TRAVELLING OF THE FUTURE: THE BRITISH AERIAL TERMINUS OF THE WHITE MOON LINE — The old order is passing. Already glimpses of the future of aerial transport, with all its mighty possibilities, are becoming visible. When the stricken nations return to a state of prosperity, great things are in store. As to what economic and
Mark Clodfelter. Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. The American bomber dream: a more humane kind of warfare through precision bombing. Looks like a worthy update to Michael Sherry’s The Rise of American Air Power. Randall T. Wakelam. The Science of Bombing: Operational
The Royal Australian Air Force turns 90 today. It was officially formed as an independent service out of the old Australian Flying Corps on 31 March 1921 (making it three years less one day younger than the Royal Air Force). At first it was just the Australian Air Force: it didn’t get the Royal prefix
Thanks to JDK for forwarding this interesting image. It’s the front cover of Bomber Command: The Air Ministry’s Account of Bomber Command’s Offensive against the Axis, September, 1939-July, 1941 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1941) (written by Hilary Saunders). So it was part of the same series of propaganda pamphlets as the more famous The
So, THATCamp Melbourne is over. It was pretty much as I expected, which is to say it was excellent. I’m not going to write a conference report (you should have been following #thatcamp on Twitter for that!) but two sessions did give me ideas for digital history projects I might like to do. One day.
John S. Partington. Building Cosmopolis: The Political Thought of H. G. Wells. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2003. A very highly regarded book on Wells’ ideas about a world state and how to get one, a subject which I have dipped into insofar as it involves airpower (which is frequently).
Later this week I’m going to THATCamp Melbourne. What’s THATCamp, you ask? THATCamp stands for The Humanities and Technology Camp. It’s an unconference devoted to exploring the ways in which the humanities and digital technology can work together. It is informal and collegial: attendees vote on the programme on the first morning. It’s practical and
Lead item in today’s Glasgow Herald is a report that ‘a German U-boat is believed to have reached waters somewhere off the North Atlantic coast of America’ (7). Slow news day? Not really; the real story is the way the war is creeping ever closer to America, and vice versa. The U-boat news was announced
