Ideas for Your Group to Do on Your Own Or with Us
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The Kettle April 2014 An online monthly magazine for group travel organisers Inside this issue This month’s Guided Tour On Paper, The Cavalry of the Clouds & The Zeppelins looks at the first air raids on Britain when the Zeppelins came and how our Great War pilots learned to bring them down. There are also descriptions of three new Great War Tours: two in London Bearskin & Blighty and Women of The Great War & Men with Splendid Hearts: The Great War in Essex. Ideas for your group to do on your own or with us Published by City & Village Tours The Cavalry of the Clouds & The Zeppelins Should the early history of military aviation not appear to the £1000 jackpot in 1909 for flying across the English contain much promise for an interesting coffee break please Channel Northcliffe was a tad disappointed having hoped read on because it might just surprise you. You might even that Wilbur Wright would accept the challenge. Bleriot’s find yourself drawn to going to see some early aeroplanes. aeroplane was displayed in the window of Selfridges on Military aviation began with balloons. In 1794 during the Oxford Street drawing huge clouds. HG Wells’ recently French Revolutionary Wars the French brought the Siege published novel The War in the Air reflected the growing of Manburg to an abrupt end when they sent up a balloon public interest in and fear of aerial conflict and following to expose the enemy positions. This so unnerved the Bleriot’s success Wells wrote in the Daily Mail that Austrian and Dutch besiegers that they simply gave up and Britain was no longer an inaccessible island. Zut alors! A Frenchman had flown onto our shores! went home. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin made his first balloon ascent in 1863 in America as an observer for the In 1912 an aeroplane was first used in war when Italy Union troops during the American Civil War. seized Tripoli from the Ottoman Empire and established Von Zeppelin became a military hero in the 1870-71 Libya as an Italian colony. The Italians flew Farman Franco-Prussian War and later served as a Commander Pushers (pushed by the propeller placed not on the nose of the Uhlans – the famed and dashing light cavalry who but behind the cockpit) using them primarily for infantry carried sabres and lances trailing colourful pennants. reconnaissance but in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 they Following a less successful stint in the Prussian Cavalry became offensive weapons as Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and aged 52 von Zeppelin retired to devote himself to and Montenegro went up against the Ottoman Empire dirigibles. After many experiments he partnered up with taking Macedonia and Thrace from the Turks before Daimler and flew his first successful rigid airship – the fighting among themselves over the spoils. As the rumbles Zeppelin LZ1 in July of 1900. By the way, just so you of discontent and conflict that would end in world war know, if it’s not rigid, that is to say it has no internal grew and multiplied Lord Northcliffe wrote editorials framework, it’s not a dirigible, it’s a blimp. about the growing threat of attack from the air. He was castigated for being sensationalist. Zut Alors! Just three years later, in 1903, at the giddy height of ten A Tearing Hurry feet, the Wright brothers made the world’s first controlled, Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith CBE was born in powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight at Dayton the year of the infamous Ripper murders and, remarkably Ohio and just three years after that The Daily Mail, led by for a pioneer in a field so fraught with mortal danger, he Lord Northcliffe, started putting up cash prizes for lived for a mighty 101 years until 1989. Sopwith’s first achievements in aviation. When Louis Bleriot scooped flight was in a Farman at the Brooklands motor course where AV Roe had built the first all British aeroplane (the 1909 Avroplane with a JA Prestwich motorcycle engine). Sopwith would go on to build 18,000 aircraft for the British and allied forces during World War One: the Baby, Pups, Dolphins, Snipes, Cuckoos, Salamanders and most famously of all the single seat biplane twin-gun Camel which was credited with shooting down more enemy planes than any other allied aircraft. Biggles flew a Sopwith Camel. The Imperial War Museum due to reopen in July following a major refurbishment has one of just seven surviving Sopwith Camels – one that was shot down by a Zeppelin in August 1918. Sopwith (right) described how at the outbreak of the war Britain had no fighter craft and we had to get our skates on: Development was so fast! We literally thought of and designed and flew the airplanes in a space of about six or eight weeks. Now it takes approximately the same number of years. Relatively inexperienced pilots flying barely tested aeroplanes meant that many lives were lost to mechanical failure and accidents and, as we’ll see later, the pilots, six pound bombs would fall. But the nightly raids which determined to bring down the Zeppelins, customised their were accompanied by the dropping of banners and leaflets own aeroplanes, tinkering with the engines, the wings and announcing that The German army stands before the gates the fuselage and thus further risking their young lives. of Paris – you have no choice but to surrender, maddened Cavalry of the Clouds the French government and military. Eric Fisher Wood an In each of the Great War nations the new air services were American attaché in Paris at the time of the Six O’Clock seen as an extension of the cavalry. In Germany at the start Taube wrote in his diary: of the war the pilots who learned how to fly the machines Nothing could better have been calculated to disquiet the were all but chauffeurs for the Prussian officers with French. They have always considered themselves kings Napoleonic training who had traditionally performed the of the air. duties of observation and reconnaissance on horseback. These officers took to the skies magnificently, if not very Indeed the French were innovative aviation pioneers and practically, as though still on horseback, with sabre, spurs one of the very few nations to have any pre Great War and traditional picklehaube helmet. It was a German officer combat flying experience having used aircraft when Lieutenant Ferdinand von Hiddesen, who had learned to fly quelling Arab uprisings in Algeria and Morocco in the two years before 1914. during the closing years of the Belle Epoque, who, on 30 August 1914 flew over Paris and dropped the first bombs At the start of the war half of Germany’s total of 246 ever to fall on a city from an aeroplane. Two people were planes were Taubes whose name, rather grotesquely, killed. That night Paris ordered the world’s first blackout means dove. The design of the wings had been based on and for the next few weeks the German bombers returned the shape of the flying seeds of a tropical flowering plant every evening at 6.00pm. Parisians called the raids the Six called the Zanonia, part of the cucumber, pumpkin and O’Clock Taube. It is said that Parisians would gather at squash family: the seeds shaped not unlike those of the pavement cafes and place bets on where the three or four sycamore tree. These tiny aircraft were so stable the pilot could climb out and lie on the wing while the plane made great circles. A Taube would be the first to drop bombs on London having earlier flown escort to the Zeppelins. Flying Death Notices Pre-radar, the Taube was a sort of low tech Stealth aircraft as the linen wings were painted with clear nitrate dope (a plasticised lacquer designed to tighten and stiffen the linen rendering it airtight and waterproof), which made the aeroplane virtually transparent and almost impossible to see against a clear sunny sky. Some early aircraft of the Great War had the structure outlined in black which gave rise to the description of flying death notices but few aircraft had national markings – until being shot at and brought down by your own side became a problem. At first British aircraft were painted with the Union flag but on 26 October 1914 two men called Hosking and Crean of No 4 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps were shot 3 City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 [email protected] The Taube Dove & Zanonia seed down in flames by British troops who mistook the Union the following January he’d set up search lights, stationed flag for the Iron Cross of Germany. Following this awful sixty aeroplanes in the London-Sheerness-Dover triangle tragedy the Royal Flying Corps adopted the stylised and ordered pilots to learn how to fly at night. poppy cockade or roundel resembling a bulls eye that The Bombing Begins had been used by the French since the time of the French Because of his family connections to the British Royals Revolution. They reversed the colours so that the British the Kaiser was initially reluctant to allow England to be roundel was red, white and blue reading from the centre. bombed: like many he believed the whole thing would The Italians, Belgians, Russians and Americans also blow over before too long. But it didn’t and under pressure used roundels and today the First World War aviation from his generals the Kaiser gave the go ahead to let historical association magazine is called the Cross England, but not London, to be attacked from the air.