…Red Baron, a reference to his red aircraft and his aristocratic birth. It instantly evokes images of knights of the sky, grappling together in mid-air until one is felled, tumbling to the ground far below. As an example, here’s an account from the British press of ‘The end of the Red Baron’ (with Joseph Simpson’s illustration, above): Cavalry Captain Baron von Richthofen was shot down in aerial combat on the day when the German papers announced h…
…is the same hut or shelter as in PRG 280/1/24/108. According to some near-instantaneous reporting in the Adelaide Mail, the crowd numbered 6000, all paying (‘there was no free list. Booths for the sale of tickets were placed in the main streets, at each of which a bank teller was in charge’); the Register a couple of days later claimed ‘it is certain that at least 20,000 assembled on the Unley Oval and in the vicinity’: People were ranged on ever…
…parts of Australia it is reasonably probable that he will be a German, for instance. Australia is quite big enough to offer concealment while the alien airmen replaces passenger seats by bomb-racks. Unless there is control of flying, every possible enemy of Australia can be an aircraft-owner here.2 Hence the need for ‘Regulations that insist that no aliens may either fly or own aircraft in Australia’.3 What’s going on here? The immediate occasion…
…ortant, you see, to have large spread of wing than wing area. Suppose, for instance, that the machine is travelling 30 miles an hour, or 44ft a second, then. It will cover 5632 square feet of air in one second. The idea that wing area gives support is wrong; what does give support is the area of air covered in a given time. In this machine the measurement is 64ft spread of wing by 41ft of velocity per second, and that must be taken twice over, bec…
…cess’.8 So it was only a glider; and since there was no engine of any kind installed, it could hardly be otherwise. On the other hand, the accounts emphasise that Gordon always planned to fit an engine in the machine, and since there’d no mention of any propellors and every other single flying machine he worked on was an ornithopter, it seems reasonable to conclude that this was one too. Not only was the 1894 machine an ornithopter, and the 1900 p…
…rame the trial as a failure — or worse, as I’ll come to — but at this very instant the possibility of success was still there. Did these spectators believe, or hope, that they were witnessing the beginning of the conquest of the air? Inspecting the wrecked machine — The ‘boiler,’ still smoking, is seen in the background.2 In this one, though, the failure is complete, though the wreckage still affords some entertainment. The two men in bowlers at t…
…r a month. Who first called it a ‘big bang’ is not clear, but the earliest instance in BNA in this connection is an article in the Portsmouth Evening News from 23 September, entitled ‘A big, big bang’: If a big bang is heard during the weekend no one need be alarmed. It will be a scientific experiment arranged by the Netherlands government in connection with the transmission of the sound of explosions. The big bang will consist of the explosion of…
…tected for well over two years’ (269). But while there were certainly some instances of panic during air raids, such as the stampedes at Mile End and Bishopsgate stations in January 1918, in which 14 people died, these were in fact remarkably isolated. The considerable unrest in slum areas which did occur during the war, did not correlate particularly with air raids. When it did, such as in London in 1917, it manifested as ‘patriotic,’ anti-German…
The first instalment of some much-belated travel photo blogging from our UK trip in May-June 2024. Above, the Sérilly Cabinet, a private room built for the lady of a Parisian town house around 1778, and now relocated in its entirety to the V&A. Completely unoriginally, we started our trip in London. Slightly more originally (for us), we stayed in Hammersmith, a part of town neither of us knew very well but which turned out to be a good choice, ha…
…s were ‘in full blast’ the basement and Police Court at the Town Hall, for instance, were full night after night. Many people would wait near the Town Hall for the first note of the siren. But even those who were not experts in such matters thought that the Town Hall (like most other buildings used as shelters) was not bomb-proof, and that a direct hit on the building would result in a catastrophe involving terrible loss of life. Ultimately a mili…
