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The Phantom Airship Panic of 1913: Imagining Aerial Warfare in Britain before the Great War
- Author(s):
- Brett Holman (see profile)
- Date:
- 2016
- Subject(s):
- Technology, History, Military history, Great Britain, History, Modern
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- History of technology, Modern British history
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/af72-3721
- Abstract:
- In late 1912 and early 1913, people all over Britain reported seeing airships in the night sky where there were none. It was widely assumed that these “phantom airships” were German Zeppelins, testing British defences in preparation for the next war. The public and press responses to the phantom airship responses provide a window into the way that aerial warfare was understood before it was ever experienced in Britain. Conservative newspapers and patriotic leagues used the sightings to argue for a massive expansion of Britain’s aerial forces, perceived to be completely outclassed by Germany’s in both number and power. In many ways this airship panic was analogous to the much better known 1909 dreadnought panic. The result was the perfect Edwardian panic: simultaneously a spy panic, an invasion panic, and above all a naval panic. But it was also therefore misleading, with little anticipation of the way that Zeppelins to be used against Britain in the First World War, not against its arsenals and dockyards, but to bomb its cities.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 2 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
- Share this:
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