…n even greater astronomer than his father), and later in the 19th century crushed by a falling tree! The Observatory with various domes and doors for transit instruments. Inside are various exhibits and restored rooms, showing what the place was like when it was a working observatory. The pride of the Observatory is clearly their collection of beautiful 18th century Harrison marine chronometers (and I’m sure the curators owe Dava Sobel a pint or t…
…emergency pressure. So says the Daily Mail (p. 7), which also provides instructions for the proper care and handling of gas masks (which remain the property of the government). The Manchester Guardian (p. 13), however, reports that gangs of children are donning their gas masks and having mock battles in air raid trenches! Alderman J. A. Dale of Bradford declares himself ‘disgusted’! Here’s a map of the territories which are going to Germany (shade…
…h (and Commonwealth) system, IIRC. Nicknames – Taking Sopwith, the 1&1/2 Strutter after its unusual cabine strut arrangement, Pup, after ‘son of the 1&1/2 Strutter’ and Camel as ‘the one with the hump’ (over the guns). Dolphin and Salamander were, I think formal names, as was, I think, Tabloid. It’s a fun game to play exceptions and oddities with, and the Blackburn Blackburn is the only repetition I’m aware of – The Westland Westland and Gloster G…
…have been loosed upon the whole population of London; and, by accident or design, the poorest have borne the brunt of the attack. The psychological reaction has taken many forms. Dogged endurance of hitherto unheard-of hardships, burning indignation at Nazi inhumanity, and a generous spice of Cockney humour have all played their part in forging that iron wall of civilian determination which, side by side with the skill and heroism of our pilots,…
…piled a list of Britain’s forthcoming (and still secret) combat aircraft, ‘designed to supplement in the immediate future the Hurricane and Spitfire, Wellington, Whitley, and others’ (The Times, 8). These are: the Hawker Tornado, a single-seat fighter […] capable of a speed of about 425 m.p.h.; the Westland Whirlwind, twin-engined fighter […] capable of just over 400 m.p.h.; the Avro Manchester, a twin-engined bomber […] speed about 325 m.p.h.; an…
…and heavy night raid on one place, in which the fire bomb has the most destructive part’ (4). It concludes that, ultimately, householders and business-owners must realise that ‘Their first protection against fire is not the brigade, it is themselves’. The fire bomb, in the long run, is the worst thing that falls; only civilians are plentiful enough to take responsibility for it. Coincidentally (well, not very) there’s a lot in today’s papers about…
…s to have escaped accusations of fraud during her career, the same is not true of Price. And I have no independent verification that the transcript published by Price and scrutinised by Mr. X after the inquiry was in fact the same one sent to the Air Ministry just after the crash, or indeed if it was sent at all. Or, if it was, whether anyone paid it any attention. However, a Major Oliver Villiers of the Air Ministry did participate in Garrett’s l…
…‘armour-piercing and semi-armour-piercing bombs’ used to attack the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the only targets in Brest attacked by the RAF ‘for many months past’. The indiscriminate nature of the bombing is also contradicted by evidence from ‘a number of neutral observers’ in occupied France, who report that ‘the R.A.F.’s bombing of military objectives is extremely accurate’. There is further evidence, already reported in The Time…
…must not tolerate this cruelty, the horror of mangled bodies, entrails protruding, heads, arms, legs blown off, faces half gone, blood and human remains desecrating the soil. We must not assent to this merciless destruction of men, women, children and animals. The ghoulish (and not untypical) language aside, that’s an interesting suggestion, that the existing memorials to the Great War dead didn’t suffice as a warning of the next war. Today we pro…
…ll out of this town without getting me. The ugly shrill of the sirens, the rushing to a cellar with your gas-mask (if you have one), the utter darkness of the night – how will human nerves stand that for long? … Curious that not a single Polish bomber got through to-night. But will it be the same with the British and French? 2 September: Hitler has cabled Roosevelt he will not bomb open towns if the others don’t. No air-raid to-night. Where are th…
