Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
Creating fake Paris: why did one man build a hoax French capital?
As German aircraft attacked Paris during WWI, one man had an idea: what if you could fool the enemy into dropping their bombs elsewhere? Gavin Mortimer tells the story of an audacious wartime ruse...
Tucked away in a British newspaper called The Globe in its edition of 4 October 1920 was a short story with an intriguing headline: “A Mock Paris: French Plan to Hoodwink German Raiders.” The ruse, explained the paper, had only just come to light, and it was almost too fantastical to be true. “Camouflaged streets, factories, dwelling houses, railways, with stations and trains complete, and in fact a camouflaged capital, was the gigantic task on which French engineers were engaged when the Armistice put an end to military operations,” ran the report. It was the brainchild of an electrical engineer called Jacopozzi; a way to draw German aircraft away from the capital and onto a fake conurbation where bombs could fall without causing death and destruction. But the Germans sued for peace as the city began to take shape and Jacopozzi’s ingenuity was never put to the test. Paris was first bombed by German aircraft on 30 August 1914, the first time that a capital city had been attacked in such a manner. Four small bombs were dropped from the hands of Ferdinand von Hiddessen and his observer from their Rumpler Taube monoplane. The casualties were minimal, but the wider psychological damage was profound. A little over a decade after the Wright brothers had made the first brief flight in an airplane, the Americans’ invention was a new and terrifying weapon of war. The home front was now a battlefront, and women and children were no longer safe from enemy fire. Death from above There were other sporadic attacks in the 18 months that followed, including the first attack by Zeppelins (named after their inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin) in March 1915. The airships came from their bases in Belgium, but none caused serious casualties. However, on 29 January 1916, two Zeppelins appeared in the grey winter sky over the French capital. Their bombs wreaked havoc, killing 24 and wounding 30. The funerals of the dead were held on 7 February 1916 in a service that brought Paris to a standstill. Thousands of mourners lined the streets as six gun carriages carried the coffins to the Church of Notre-Dame de la Croix, and politicians and other dignitaries walked behind. The service was conducted by Cardinal Leon Adolphe Amette, the archbishop of Paris, who delivered what one British newspaper described as a “moving oration”. “Before you lie the victims of German barbarity, who fell on no field of battle,” he proclaimed. “Their death will help the cause of mankind and will strengthen the vigorous determination to conquer, to reduce the enemy to impotence, and to prevent a repetition of his crime.” But the impotence was all French as the air attacks increased in the months that followed. Paris had a respite in 1917 when the Germans switched the focus of their air attacks to London, using their latest bomber aircraft, the Gotha. One raid in June left 162 Britons dead. The French knew their turn would come. But how could they defend themselves? How Fernand Jacopozzi built a fake Paris A man who thought he had a solution was an electrical engineer called Fernand Jacopozzi. A Florentine by birth, Jacopozzi had previously worked on the Paris International Exposition in 1900, a world’s fair that celebrated the achievements of the past century and looked forward to what the next 100 years held. Jacopozzi believed it would be a century of progress, one which could prove lucrative for an electrical engineer such as himself. He remained in Paris and, according to one contemporary newspaper, “made a special study of electric lighting”. How Jacopozzi became involved in this secret project is unclear - for obvious reasons. But at some point in late 1917, he was commissioned by the DCA [Défense contre Avions, the War Office department charged with protecting France from air attacks] to build a fake Paris in order to fool German bombers. As outlandish it sounds to modern minds, the plan made sense at the time. Enemy aircraft navigated their way to the capital at night not by technological aids but by topography. They simply followed the River Seine and then dropped their bombs. But the Seine is a meandering river that, once it cuts through the heart of Paris, under its famous bridges and past landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, then doubles back on itself not once, but twice, like the humps of a camel. It was on the second of these ‘humps’, in the suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, that the French instructed Jacopozzi to construct his phoney city. However, there were to be two other “zones of false objectives”: a fake industrial zone would be created at Vaires-sur-Marne, situated 10 miles east of the capital, while the suburb of Saint-Denis would be relocated to Villepinte in the northeast. Light railway system Jacopozzi began his work at Villepinte in 1918, constructing a replica of the Gare de l’Est railway station - one of Paris’ busiest - and even fabricating a moving train. Drawing on his years of study of electrical lighting, the Italian used wooden boards for the train’s carriages, and for the interior lights he rigged up an ingenious system of lights on a conveyor belt. From the air it appeared that the train was moving. The industrial zone was next. Jacopozzi once again used wooden boards for the shell of the factories and for the roofs he used canvases craftily dappled with various hues of paint. With a clever combination of different coloured lamps – whites, yellows and reds – he recreated the fires and vapours emitted by a factory during the manufacturing process. The key was subtlety; he didn’t want to arouse the Germans’ suspicion by lighting up his fake creations like a Christmas tree. It was painstaking work but Jacopozzi had all but finished when German Gotha aircraft raided the capital on 16 September, dropping 22,000 kilos of bombs that left six dead and 15 wounded. Next time the bombers returned the subterfuge would be put into operation. But there wasn’t a next time. Two months later the war ended and Jacopozzi was denied the chance to see if his ingenuity had outsmarted the German pilots. Nonetheless, the French government believed they had created an important form of defence should enemy bombers appear over Paris in a future war. A veil of secrecy was thrown over Jacopozzi’s creation, one which was lifted in 1920 when the British press got hold of the story. The Globe had the scoop at the start of October, but it was The Illustrated London News in its edition of 6 November 1920 that really brought Jacopozzi’s invention to life in a photo essay headlined: “A False Paris Outside Paris — a ‘City’ Created to be Bombed.” There were photographs, maps and explanations, all of which amounted to what the newspaper called “remarkably interesting revelations”. Read more | Moustaches, Cossacks and an inland lighthouse: a brief history of the Royal Air Force Towering achievements What they didn’t disclose, however, was the name of the man behind the sham city. But Jacopozzi was honoured by the French government with the presentation of the Legion d’Honneur, and he enjoyed great success in the 1920s. Having illuminated the Eiffel Tower, he also installed floodlights on the Place de la Concorde and lit up several other popular landmarks in the city. The corporate world spotted the potential in Jacopozzi’s talent and Citroën hired him to create a large luminous advertisement of one of their motor cars on the Eiffel Tower. Jacopozzi died in Paris in 1932. “He attracted world interest by his illumination of the Eiffel Tower, and did much to make Paris the City of Light,” remarked The People newspaper in a short paragraph about his passing. There was no mention of Jacopozzi’s contribution to the French war effort but no news is better than fake news. Or in his case, a fake city. Gavin Mortimer is a historian and author. His books include Guidance from the Greatest (Constable, 2020) and David Stirling: The Phoney Major: The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS (Constable, 2022) This article was first published in the April 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed Magazine
He shot down 3 planes in 4 minutes: meet the WW2 pilot you won't have heard about
"Everyone cried unashamedly at the news of this young pilot’s death", writes Kavita Puri
If you stroll across the green swathe of the Maidan in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) – past the monumental marble Victoria Memorial built to honour that Empress of India – and keep heading south, the city noise fades, and so too does the bustle. Off Debendra Lal Khan Road by the Tolly Canal, and opposite the zoological garden, are the gates of Bhowanipore Cemetery. Walk through them and you enter a world of order and peace. At the back, beyond lines of graves from the 19th and 20th century, are the headstones of young, mainly British men who fought in both world wars and died here. Many perished from diseases such as malaria and smallpox; some were killed in accidents, and one was apparently murdered while off duty. Also here are the graves of 14 Scottish soldiers from the Black Watch battalion who died in the cyclone of 16 October 1942 in Midnapore, west of Kolkata, as well as troops from a merchant ship hit by the Japanese in the Second World War. Read more | Before the atomic bombs, the USA hit Japan with one of the most overlooked (but deadly) campaigns in WW2 On one headstone is etched the name of a man I had heard about from elderly Indians and British people who had lived in the city during the war. Arthur Maurice Owers Pring – known to everyone simply as Pring – was a pilot in the Royal Air Force. He was killed at the age of just 22 while defending Calcutta from an aerial bombing attack by Japanese forces. This dark chapter opened on 20 December 1942, when Japanese fighter planes filled the skies. Navigating by moonlight, a force of eight Imperial Japanese Army Air Service medium bombers, code-named ‘Sally’ by the Allies, scattered their weapons around the city. The oil plant at Budge Budge, on the Hooghly river south-west of the city, was one of the places hit. Raids continued the following night, and on 23, 24 and 28 December – the most devastating assault coming on Christmas Eve. The city was largely undefended militarily. A detachment of Beaufighters from RAF 89 Squadron in Egypt was diverted to Calcutta, arriving on 12 January 1943. Two days later, a new squadron was raised: No. 176. Its motto was Nocte Custodimus – “We keep the night watch.” The young men who made up that new squadron were already veterans. One of them, Flying Officer Arthur Maurice Pring, had successfully taken out enemy planes at night over Egypt and Sicily. He had just been initiated into his new squadron when the moon returned – and so did the Japanese bombers. By 9.45pm he was in the air east of the city, and successfully destroyed three ‘Sallys’ in just four minutes. Read more | The untold story of India’s WW2 prisoners of war This was the first time Japanese planes were intercepted over Calcutta. When I interviewed 93-year-old Sri Sen, who was a teenager at the time, his eyes lit up as he recalled the incident. Even today, people who remember that time mention Pring by name, and remember his heroics. Pring’s photograph was in the newspapers, and was used on recruitment posters, above the slogan: “A cool nerve, a clear brain, and unlimited ‘guts’, that’s what it takes to make an ace pilot like Pring.” He was feted in military and civil circles around the city, as well as by locals. When the Japanese returned on 5 December 1943, they came at noon. Among those flyers sent up to intercept them was Pring. He was hit, and his plane went up in flames. There was no sign of a parachute. His body was eventually found, and he was laid to rest on 12 December 1943 in Bhowanipore Cemetery. It was a moment that provoked profound emotion in the city: Ron Walker, at the time a young boy whose father was in the Calcutta Police, recalled how everyone “cried unashamedly” at Pring’s death. Still today, that one young man who died in the Second World War is remembered by those who lived in Calcutta back then, his grave cared for in a quiet corner of the city, a long way from home. This column was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
"England is invincible": How the Luftwaffe lost the Battle of Britain
When the Battle of Britain erupted, many Luftwaffe pilots anticipated a swift victory. Yet soon that confidence had been replaced by chronic fatigue and a crippling fear of drowning in “dirty water”. Victoria Taylor charts the mental disintegration of Hitler’s flyers
On a muggy night in late August 1940, Hinnerk Waller’s fraying tether had finally snapped. Relentlessly deployed in the Battle of Britain as part of the Luftwaffe fighter wing JG 52, Waller was paying for every nerve-wracking sortie with his sanity. Snatching hold of his Walther pistol, he sprinted into some nearby woods with the grim intention of killing himself. A few concerned airmen rose up to stop him, but their Staffelkapitän, Helmut Kühle, bade them to resume their seats. “He was a shrewd judge of character,” as Waller’s friend Ulrich Steinhilper later recalled, “and as we all sat waiting for what we thought was the inevitable shot, nothing happened.” Steinhilper added that this “was our first case of Kanalkrankheit [‘Channel Sickness’] – a combination of chronic stress and acute fatigue” that was brought on by constantly flying in the Battle of Britain. That this dramatic episode came only two months into the Luftschlacht um England (‘Air Battle for England’) – the German name for the Battle of Britain and the Blitz – highlights just how frenetic this aerial campaign had become for the Luftwaffe. Just four days after his suicidal crisis, Waller was unceremoniously flung back onto the frontline. What is most important to observe about his breakdown, however, is that it happened when the Luftwaffe was actually in its most successful phase of the aerial campaign against the RAF. Waller’s mental anguish, then, starkly demonstrates that military success and heightened morale do not necessarily go hand in hand. It also demonstrates that we should be wary about imposing British perspectives on the Luftwaffe’s mentality during the Battle of Britain. The enemy’s flaws Pointing out that the German air force was not as indefatigable as it is often presented is certainly not to downplay the monumental achievement of the RAF’s ‘Few’ in denying the necessary air supremacy and build-up of invasion barges for the Wehrmacht to invade Britain in Operation Sealion. On the contrary, to wear the aggressors down to their last nerve is testimony to the hellacious fight that the RAF put up during the campaign. Yet, if we are to recount faithfully why the Battle of Britain unfolded as it did, we must pinpoint how the Luftwaffe’s internal doubts and weaknesses rapidly conspired to erode its seemingly unflappable fighting spirit. Thoroughly fleshing out the Luftwaffe’s hopes and hangups allows us to transform its historical role in the RAF’s ‘Finest Hour’ from a cartoonish antagonist to a multidimensional, flawed yet formidable opponent. This makes it even more remarkable and crucial that the RAF managed to repel its aerial onslaught. Read more | The real SAS Rogue Heroes: the true stories behind the WW2 drama Mood of jubilation During the spring and early summer of 1940, Nazi Germany had captured Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries and France. With much of Europe sunken under the swastika, the Luftwaffe’s general mood was one of jubilation. Yet, for as long as Britain remained in the war, the Germans were unable to bask in their continental victories. The Luftwaffe had started to ponder clearing the English Channel for an invasion, but they mainly hoped that Britain could be pressured into suing for peace by throttling its essential shipping lines and maritime assets. Thus, on 2 July 1940, Hermann Göring directed Wolfram von Richthofen’s VIII Air Corps to begin attacking “Channel sea traffic”. The first phase of the Battle of Britain – the Channel Battle – was now under way. The German fighter pilot Günther Rall wrote optimistically of needing “a few more days, and the strait will be impassable. Then an essential prerequisite for the invasion will be created.” Yet Adolf Galland, who was more experienced than Rall, noted how “the German pilots thought that the [Nazi] propaganda about England being unprepared was wrong. It annoyed us. We found the English well prepared. Not an easy job. We were not hopeful of victory.” He added that “many pilots feared the water – the small, dirty water. All Channel Flyers felt this. I emphasise: the ‘Shite Kanal’ did as much damage to our morale as the English fighters.” As a Luftwaffe Soldat attached to an airfield operations company wrote on 20 July 1940, “We have a big victory behind us, but the biggest fight is still ahead of us. We don’t have earth beneath us, but water – that’s more dangerous. We hope for the best and wish to return to our homes as victorious soldiers.” British radar, too, was rattling the Luftwaffe. The German fighter pilot Hans-Ekkehard Bob noted of a sortie gone wrong over Britain in late July 1940 that “it was incomprehensible how this [Spitfire] formation could reach us in the rear without any sight in such a good attack position. “Later,” he continued, “we learnt that the British were at that time already in the possession of a kind of radar that could lead exactly in height and direction.” The RAF incorporated radar into the highly sophisticated ‘Dowding System’. Spearheaded by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the system included radar transmitters, receivers and stations as part of Chain Home and Chain Home Low, the latter of which was optimised for detecting incoming Luftwaffe aircraft at lower altitudes. This not only gave the RAF an advance warning of up to 20 minutes as the Luftwaffe passed over the Channel, but it also constituted a huge blow to the German airmen who feared coming up as a blip on British radar. In the face of this increasing military resistance, Göring instigated Operation Eagle Attack, which was devised to sock the knockout blow to Britain. RAF flying units, ground installations (including radar), supply organisations, and the British aircraft industry would all come under intense attack in this next phase of the Battle of Britain. Göring had made Adolf Hitler the rather lofty promise that the RAF could be subdued within five weeks – spanning from 8 August to 15 September – ahead of the amphibious Wehrmacht invasion on ‘Sealion Day’. After a bout of patchy weather, the Eagle Attack was finally earmarked to commence on 13 August 1940, codenamed Adlertag (‘Eagle Day’). Yet, that same day, a junior doctor with the Luftwaffe bomber wing KG 2 wrote a most forlorn letter to his wife: “Here in France, we are all slowly going crazy. If we don’t get relieved in the autumn, I think almost all of our men will be nervous and exhausted. What has been asked of us for years is too much. God grant us that the last stroke of violence succeeds. As a doctor, I see how things are with us. People gather their last strength to win. The last few days have brought us some terrible experiences. We have lost many brave and loyal comrades and are immensely sad.” Read more | 6 Battle of Britain Myths The junior doctor’s observations suggest that the Luftwaffe was in a far worse psychological state early into the campaign than is often acknowledged. To add to the operational strain, the morning of Adlertag opened with disaster for the Luftwaffe. Several unescorted bomber units did not receive Göring’s early postponement order due to the poor weather, as their radio crystals had not been updated to be compatible with the fighter units’ communication system. As the weather cleared up in the afternoon, the Luftwaffe went on to launch 1,485 sorties, hitting RAF Detling and Eastchurch especially hard. Nevertheless, with much of the German bomber crews striking at the wrong targets, Adlertag exacted too heavy a price for what was achieved. The Luftwaffe lost 42 aircraft, along with 89 pilots and aircrew killed or captured – 13 per cent of its striking force. On 15 August, Göring hastily organised a staff conference to dissect the air force’s mistakes. On this same day, the Germans suffered their heaviest losses of the battle so far – a day they dubbed ‘Black Thursday’ and the RAF hailed ‘The Greatest Day’. Then, on 18 August 1940, came ‘The Hardest Day’, due to the fact that it saw the highest number of combined RAF and Luftwaffe aircraft losses in a single day. By late August, the Eagle Attack began to swing in favour of the Germans, who had managed to bring the kill tallies on both sides to a more even ratio on its best days. Yet, in a reflection of how their hunger for medals and victories could sometimes get the better of them, a captured Leutnant and Oberleutnant were overheard discussing in September 1940 how, “We underrated the English fighters. Recently everyone who wanted a few easy additions to his bag flew over, but they got a surprise.” By late August, Ulrich Steinhilper had become greatly disillusioned with this opportunism: “The picture looked grim. I was thinking we were all fighting to rid the sky of the RAF, and what was really developing was that many individuals were using this battle as a stage upon which they could further their own careers and personal scores, while apparently giving little consideration to the overall tactics or the losses of their men who were behind them. There were times when my morale took severe knocks.” IN NUMBERS: THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN 30,000 is the number of sorties that the Luftwaffe flew over Britain during the Blitz 600% is how much Luftwaffe losses shot up from previous operations during the first week of the ‘Eagle Attack’ in August 1940 26 was the average age of German airmen during the summer of 1940 – six years older than their British counterparts Between 3 and 4 is the number of sorties that it's estimated the average German bomber crew survived during the most intense periods of the air war over Britain The Blitz begins Things were about to get even more complicated. On the night of 24–25 August 1940, stray German bombs were unintentionally dropped over civilian boroughs in East Ham and Bethnal Green. On 7 September, after the British prime minister Winston Churchill immediately greenlit a retaliatory blow from Bomber Command against Berlin, an enraged Göring launched his first major strike against the British capital. The opening day of the Blitz killed 448 civilians and wounded 1,337 more, marking the start of the campaign’s longest phase – one that would run until May 1941. For some Luftwaffe personnel, the Blitz was seen as a natural escalation of the Luftschlacht um England. One Soldat wrote confidently on 8 September 1940 that: “I have a lot of work these days. There is no longer any ‘closing time’ at all. Unfortunately, I cannot write to you about our special tasks. But you will have already heard on the radio in detail about the extensive destruction in England and especially in London caused by our bombers. We’ll soften up the English. Our planes all returned from combat missions yesterday…” Hans-Ekkehard Bob, on the other hand, claimed that “as far as I could learn, the RAF had by accident bombed Berlin. The supreme command retaliated and ordered to bomb London. We, the fighter pilots, were told at that time that strategic aims in the district of London were attacked. The bombing of civilians was out of the question for us.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/AKG1129394cmyk-WL-3850251.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph shows a group of children huddled together in a trench, all looking up to the sky" title="Children shelter in a trench in hop fields in Kent in September 1940, while RAF fighters engage with Luftwaffe bombers on the way to attack London (Image by AKG)" /> Not all Luftwaffe airmen, however, shared Bob’s sentiments when it came to attacking non-military targets. One captured Luftwaffe prisoner reportedly said of bombing British hospitals: “Well, the people are half dead anyway, and if the hospitals are bombed, no fresh casualties can be admitted.” Another had tried to bomb Hyde Park because “he knew there were a lot of air raid shelters there”. In a bugged conversation between three captured fighter pilots from September 1940, one claimed that “England is invincible. That is the mentality of the people here, and if every civilian defends his home stubbornly, then it’s a difficult matter.” His colleague replied: “They’ll simply be shot.” Thus, even the German fighter pilots – who are often portrayed as a noble adversary to Fighter Command in British histories – were hardly blind to the criminal nature of the regime they were fighting for, nor the deadly repercussions of a Luftwaffe victory for Britain. On 15 September 1940, the Luftwaffe launched a major raid on London, Portsmouth and Southampton. Benefiting from the lull in attacks on RAF airfields during the Blitz, however, a revitalised Fighter Command shot down 56 German planes – two for every British fighter lost. The RAF would hail this day as ‘Battle of Britain Day’; the Luftwaffe would remember it as a disaster. The bomber pilot Otto Bechtle said of his men’s losses that “the whole Gruppe was nearly demoralised. It was a drunken party, weeping for comrades. The survivors sang: ‘The steel wings are flashing; the Tommy has given us a hiding.’” This defiant counterattack stunned Hitler into postponing Sealion indefinitely on 17 September 1940. From July until the end of October, the Germans lost around 1,887 aircraft of all types. The Luftwaffe’s nerves were now so on edge that an unprecedented number of 79 suicides and suicide attempts was reached among its personnel between mid-September and October 1940. By 1941, the Luftwaffe surgeon-general even had to issue a special directive that dealt with the prevention of suicide within the organisation. The impact of losses Towards the end of 1940, however, it was not just the Luftwaffe’s mental wellbeing that was suffering. The German air force’s lack of a proper reserve compared to that of the RAF meant that, as the senior Luftwaffe psychologist Dr Siegfried Gerathewohl put it, “even the totally unsuitable were accepted for training”. Inexperienced and overzealous recruits posed a risk not just to themselves, but also to their more senior commanders. Oberst Johannes Fink, who was Kommodore of the bomber wing KG 2, witnessed the disconcerting combination of operational naivety and night-time flying during the Blitz. “On the way back from London, I saw the flight mechanic of a plane ahead fire wildly and shoot holes in his own tail. In my aircraft, all the crew were wounded. No pilot in my aircraft – I flew the machine myself, had only the observer/bomb aimer up front with me. All except me were wounded, mostly splinters. I had a map in my hand – a bullet went through the map. When we got back to the airfield, the flight mechanic of the machine ahead was excitedly pointing to all the holes in the tail of his aircraft and saying what a narrow escape he’d had: ‘Look at all the hits we’ve had.’ I walked up to him and said: ‘That was you.’” More alarming still for the Luftwaffe was the number of airmen being lost in crashes in the darkness, as well as those forced to bale out over the English Channel during the perishing autumn and winter months. In November 1940, a British intelligence report documented that “a total of 158 German air force personnel were reported, as either PoW or dead, by this section. Of these, 54 were living and 104 dead, which is a considerable reversal of the proportions previously encountered.” Throughout the Blitz, the Luftwaffe haemorrhaged a further 600 bombers on top of its previous losses in the main Battle of Britain – resulting in a total of 2,487 German aircraft lost across the entire Luftschlacht um England. Nearly 2,000 members of its flying crews were killed and a further 2,600 had gone missing during its full 10-month assault on Britain. Although the Luftwaffe’s bomber crews had succeeded in leaving scores of British cities in rubble, the country’s overall wartime production had not been greatly affected in return for the considerable strain of launching nearly 30,000 sorties during the Blitz alone. Some Luftwaffe veterans later tried to downplay the long-term detrimental effects of the British campaign on its operational strength, with Walter Lehweß-Litzmann – who later became the Kommodore of a Luftwaffe bomber wing – claiming that “the Luftwaffe was by no means weakened as it moved east, as its superior initial effectiveness subsequently demonstrated. The crew losses over England were offset by the combat experience gained by the units and commanders, of which I was a member.” In reality, however, the Luftwaffe that headed into 1941 had been badly affected in both the quantity of its aircraft and quality of its aircrews. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/H3AE57cmyk-WL-21c8ed3.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A group of men in military uniform stand around a map, with two men in the front bent over it, discussing things" title="A Luftwaffe unit receives a briefing. By late 1941, the losses incurred in the Battle of Britain had blunted the German air force’s firepower (Image by Alamy)" /> The butterfly effect The Germans knew that a failure to subdue the British in 1940–41 would now have negative repercussions for the war in the Mediterranean and north Africa, with the Luftwaffe having been assigned to protect General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in February 1941. And, with the Luftwaffe failing to replace its earlier losses over Britain, the further depletion of its operational bomber strength during the six-month struggle of ‘Barbarossa’ – the titanic invasion of the Soviet Union – was acutely felt. By the time that the USA entered the war in December 1941, the Luftwaffe theoretically fielded only 47 per cent of its intended bomber strength. And, with roughly half of these aircraft actually being in commission, the Luftwaffe possessed just 468 serviceable operational bombers by the first week of December 1941. The true importance of the Luftwaffe failing to knock the British out of the war during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, then, lies in the potent butterfly effect that this failure triggered. Its disappointing aerial campaign over Britain may not have guaranteed Nazi Germany’s eventual defeat, but the unfavourable outcome had certainly robbed the Axis of being able to secure a swift, decisive and straightforward victory by 1941. Read more | The Few: who exactly were the heroes of the Battle of Britain? Thus, as Herbert Rieckhoff – formerly the Geschwaderkommodore of the bomber wing KG 30 – later confirmed, “the first blow from which [the Luftwaffe] never recovered came in the late summer of 1940, during the fight against England. This was followed by the Blitz against England in 1940/41, in which it slowly continued to bleed out.” Fighter Command, then, had not only saved Britain from going down the darkest of timelines. It had also helped to wear down the German airmen’s resources and resolve. In doing so, it helped set a crucial precedent for the Luftwaffe’s chronic overexertion during the latter half of the Second World War. Timeline: The Luftwaffe's assault on Britain 10 July 1940 The Battle of Britain begins The intensification of German air attacks against Allied shipping in the English Channel marks the opening of the ‘Channel Battle’. The Luftwaffe flies more than 1,300 sorties during this five-week phase. 13 August Hitler ramps up the pressure ‘Eagle Day’ sees the Luftwaffe beginning a full-scale assault on RAF airfields, radar installations and other critical defence infra- structure. The Germans lose 48 aircraft in the air, compared to 13 for the British. 15 August A black day for the Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe loses a further 75 aircraft on what it dubs ‘Black Thursday’. Fighter Command, which sustains less than half of the losses incurred by the Germans, hails this ‘The Greatest Day’. 18 August ‘The Hardest Day’ Fierce air battles over southern England, including RAF Kenley and Biggin Hill, result in Fighter Command losing 68 fighters to 69 Luftwaffe aircraft downed – the heaviest daily combined loss for both sides. 24/25 August Britain bombs Berlin Perceiving stray German bombs that accidentally hit residential London areas on 24 August to be deliberate, Winston Churchill greenlights a retaliatory blow against Berlin on 25 August. 7 September London is hit hard Göring launches his first thunderous attack on London and other neighbouring cities, describing it as “a stroke right into the enemy’s heart”. A total of 448 British civilians are killed and 1,337 are injured. 17 September Hitler shelves invasion plans During a raid on London, Portsmouth and Southampton on 15 September, the Luftwaffe loses two aircraft for every British fighter lost. Two days later, Hitler postpones Operation Sealion indefinitely. 31 October The Battle of Britain comes to an end The Germans launch their final daylight raid before the solely nocturnal phase of the Blitz gets under way. This signals the end of the Battle of Britain. 14-15 November Coventry takes a pounding The Luftwaffe inflicts a deadly raid on Coventry. The bombing kills 554, while a third of the city’s houses are destroyed and Coventry Cathedral is razed to the ground. 10-11 May 1941 The last major raid With 1,500 civilians killed, 10–11 May marks London’s ‘Hardest Night’ of the Blitz. By the end of the Blitz that month, around 43,000 British civilians have lost their lives. Victoria Taylor is an aviation historian. Her new book, Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, is out now, published by Apollo This column was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The balloon-riding Victorians who courted disaster: the true story behind The Aeronauts
In 1862, at a time when interest in ballooning was still at its height, two Victorian men began a flight to make a series of scientific readings. Their hope was to better understand the weather, but, as Nige Tassell explores, their adventurous and record-breaking ascent almost ended in disaster – a story that inspired the 2019 Eddie Redmayne adventure, The Aeronauts…
The sight of a hot air balloon was a popular Victorian spectacle, so the quiet scenes on 5 September 1862 would have made for a curious sight. On the outskirts of the Black Country town of Wolverhampton, two men climbed into the basket of a large balloon, but this was not to be a flight for public entertainment or simple pleasure. Armed with scientific instruments and packing a cargo of six pigeons, the men had loftier intentions. Who was James Glaisher? The more senior of the two was the fabulously bewhiskered scientist James Glaisher, the superintendent of the Magnetic and Meteorological Department at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, who would go on to be a founder member of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. His co-pilot was Henry Coxwell, a highly experienced balloonist. The day’s flight was one of many the men had made together – part of a series of 28 balloon ascents commissioned by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Who was Amelia Wren? Glaisher and Coxwell's 1862 flight was the subject of the 2019 film The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne as James Glaisher. Henry Coxwell was replaced by the fictional Amelia Wren (played by Felicity Jones) who did not exist. Her story was an amalgamation of other female aviators of the day, such as Sophie Blanchard, the first female professional balloonist. What were Glaisher and Coxwell trying to achieve? Glaisher and Coxwell’s mission was to measure the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere to better understand how this governed the weather – perhaps the scientist saw himself as a latter-day Christopher Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan, keen to explore what he called the “aerial ocean”, which offered him “a boundless sea of enquiry”. The weather that September day proved to be kinder than on earlier attempts, especially two months earlier when the pair’s flight plans had been scuppered by unusually high winds for July. At three minutes past 1pm, they released the tethers of their balloon, named Mars, and the upward voyage began. Glaisher was delighted that, on this windless afternoon, they rose “with the ease of an ascending vapour”. The balloon climbed two miles in just 19 minutes, aided by the potent gas supply ‘brewed’ by the manager of the nearby Wolverhampton Gas Works. Once airborne, Glaisher the scientist set about his work. One experiment was to observe how high altitude affected the pigeons he had brought along, so as the balloon reached three miles high, he scooped up a bird and threw it over the side. Glaisher watched as it “dropped like a piece of paper”. A second pigeon, released at the four-mile mark, “flew vigorously round and round, apparently taking a dip each time” then a third was forced to take to the air between four and five miles, but “fell downwards as a stone”. Glaisher didn’t heed these warnings. How did disaster nearly strike Glaisher's balloon flight? As the balloon continued to rise and the temperatures fell, Glaisher began to feel the effects of the thin air himself. His sight became fuzzy, his limbs grew heavy and immovable, and he could not even call out to Coxwell for help. Soon, Glaisher had passed out, his head hanging over the basket. “In an instant, darkness came over me,” his memoirs reported. “I believed I would experience nothing more as death would come unless we speedily descended.” No descent was imminent. Coxwell realised he would have to make the dangerous climb out of the basket and into the balloon’s rigging in order to free the valve line, which had become entangled. It was a crucial piece of equipment as it released gas from the canopy, which in turn allowed the balloon to descend. Coxwell’s first attempt to untangle the valve line ended with an ungraceful tumble back into the basket while experiencing temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius. The balloon continued to rise. When he tried again, he had no feeling in his fingers due to the cold. Desperately, he clamped his teeth around the rope and forcefully tugged. The balloon’s ascent slowed and within a few seconds, the descent began. With the immediate danger now past, Coxwell’s attention could now turn to Glaisher. He initially thought his partner to be resting due to his semi-recumbent position but, after realising the severity of the situation, Coxwell anxiously tried to rouse the unconscious man. “Never shall I forget those painful moments of doubt and suspense as to Mr Glaisher’s state when no response came to my questions,” he later wrote. “I began to fear he would never take any more readings.” His efforts, though, were met with success. “I have been insensible,” declared Glaisher, with typically Victorian understatement, on regaining consciousness. “You have,” confirmed a relieved Coxwell. “And I too very nearly.” Glaisher’s recovery was swift – reporting that “no inconvenience followed my insensibility” – and the first thing he did was to pick up his pencil to continue his readings. Successful scientific endeavour was paramount and certainly not to be dented by the mere trifle of a near-death experience. That was, at least, until he noticed that Coxwell had not gone unaffected. His co-pilot’s hands were black from frostbite so Glaisher immediately sought a remedy, rubbing brandy into the hands until circulation was restored. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/09/GettyImages90744254-a2bce8a-e1725442252912.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A drawing of James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell's balloon ascent on 5 September 1862, which achieved a record altitude of at least 29,000 feet (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" title="A drawing of James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell's balloon ascent on 5 September 1862, which achieved a record altitude of at least 29,000 feet (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" /> The last reading Glaisher made before falling unconscious had been at 29,000ft. Although his calculations that the balloon carried on above 36,000ft are almost certainly flawed (both men would surely have perished at that height), the confirmed height was still higher than anyone else had managed before. As they headed back to terra firma, Glaisher released a fourth pigeon, but it simply hitched a ride atop the balloon. The pair landed in a farmer’s field in Shropshire, 20 miles from the launch site. Since, as Glaisher subsequently moaned, “no conveyance of any kind could be obtained”, he was forced to walk seven miles to the market town of Ludlow to find help. Coxwell stayed behind to look after the balloon as, after a previous landing in the area, the aeronauts had encountered hostility from locals annoyed at potential damage to crops. Was Glaisher and Coxwell's flight a success? Despite the high drama on board, the flight had been an unqualified success – and not only for the altitude reached. The readings from the ascent provided the first direct indication of the existence of the stratosphere, and, as Glaisher’s great-grandson John L Hunt has noted, the events of the day “was one of the first practical examples of the effect of the lack of oxygen on the human body”. Glaisher, as the scientist and project leader, is rightly celebrated for the achievement, but there is a danger of downplaying Coxwell’s contribution. After all, he was the man who ensured the balloon didn’t disappear into the atmosphere and who revived his colleague. Read more | When was the first crossing of the English Channel by air? In the days after they reached for the skies, the duo’s travails were chronicled and lauded by the press. The ascent was the lead story in The Times and Punch magazine celebrated the feat in verse: ‘Tis true that these two men did go Six miles towards the sky; But as for Icarus, we know That story’s all my eye. Then what’s the use to hear about Old heroes’ fabled acts When now they’re beaten out and out By wonders that are facts. And what of the two remaining pigeons? Both landed with the balloon – one dead, but the other, after a short recovery, escaped to the sanctuary of the Shropshire countryside. It would never fly so high again. And neither would Glaisher and Coxwell. Key moments in the rise of the balloon 4 June 1783 Paper manufacturers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier demonstrate the first hot air balloon in France. It stayed aloft for 10 minutes. 21 November 1783 After several tests, the first manned and untethered flight takes place with Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes aboard a Montgolfier balloon. 1 December 1783 A reported 400,000 spectators see the manned gas balloon lift off in Paris. Powered by hydrogen gas, it stays in the air for around two hours and covers a distance of more than 20 miles before landing at Nesles-la-Vallée. 4 June 1784 A young opera singer named Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered balloon. She sings duets with the pilot while aboard La Gustave, christened in honour of Gustav III of Sweden, who was watching the flight. 7 January 1785 French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries fly from Dover, England, to Guînes, France – completing the first aerial crossing of the English Channel. They nearly crash during the two-and-a half-hour voyage. 1798 Jeanne-Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to pilot a balloon solo. The following year, she replicates her husband’s pioneering parachuting achievement by jumping from an altitude of 900 metres. 6 July 1819 Having been flying balloons for 14 years, French aeronaut Sophie Blanchard – the first female professional balloonist and husband to Channel-hopping Jean-Pierre – dies when her hydrogen-filled balloon catches fire. As well as long-distance and high-altitude flights, Blanchard specialised in night-time spectacles during which she would set off fireworks. 7 November 1836 A long-distance record that will last until the 20th century is set when British balloonist Charles Green and two others fly from Vauxhall Gardens in London to the Duchy of Nassau (now in Germany). The 480-mile trip takes 18 hours – although they had prepared for it to take two weeks. 1861-65 During the American Civil War, both the Union and Confederate armies use gas balloons to carry out aerial reconnaissance missions. It is not the first time balloons are used in warfare, though. In 1849, the Austrians sent hundreds of unmanned balloons over Venice armed with bombs in a prototype air raid. 27 May 1931 Sat in a pressurised aluminium capsule attached to a large hydrogen balloon, Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer reach 15,781 metres (nearly 10 miles), becoming the first to enter the Earth’s stratosphere. 4 May 1961 The Strato-Lab V high-altitude hydrogen-filled balloon ascends to a record breaking height of 34,668 metres (more than 21.5 miles), piloted by Americans Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather. The nearly 10-hour flight is successful, with the men wearing the US Navy’s Mark IV full-pressure suit, but ends in tragedy when Prather drowns after the balloon ditches in the sea at the end of the descent. Ross, who had spent more than 100 hours in balloon flight during his career, does not fly again. 11 September 2016 Bill Costen, the first African-American commercial hot-air balloon pilot in the United States, receives a lifetime achievement award from the Balloon Federation of America. The former American Footballer began his ballooning career more than 40 years previously, in 1975. This article was first published in the December 2019 issue of BBC History Revealed
Eric 'Winkle' Brown: Britain's most extraordinary pilot
Paul Beaver charts the remarkable life of Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown – a death-defying Second World War pilot
It would be fair to say that Second World War pilot Eric 'Winkle' Brown led an extraordinary life. He narrowly escaped death when his ship was torpedoed, smashed the world record for flying the most types of aircraft and had several unlikely encounters with the movers and shakers of his time. Speaking to Emily Briffett, historian and biographer Paul Beaver charts some of Brown's remarkable adventures and escapades. View Green Video on the source website
Amelia Earhart's disappearance: who was American aviator, and what happened to her?
Amelia Earhart is best known for her mysterious disappearance in 1937, when she and the aircraft she was piloting vanished over the Pacific Ocean. Who was the daring 20th-century aviator, and do we have any clues as to what happened to her?
Amelia Earhart dominated headlines in the early 20th century, breaking record after record for her daring aviation exploits, her fame peaking in 1932 when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. But today she is best known for her apparent demise, in 1937, when she disappeared while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world by plane. On 2 July 1937, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, set out from Lae Airfield in Papua New Guinea, bound for Howland Island – a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean where they planned to refuel. But they never arrived. The press seized on the story, with the US president at the time, Theodore Roosevelt – a friend of Amelia Earhart – mounting a search and rescue mission for the missing aviators. Author Clare Mulley, who discussed Earhart on the HistoryExtra podcast, described the scale of the search mission: “Four massive ships went out, and Eleanor Roosevelt was aboard one of them. “There were 4,000 men involved at a cost of $4 million, and it became a political nightmare.” After a fortnight, the search was called off. Despite repeated attempts to find the pilots, and a flood of reported radio signals from Earhart, she and Noonan were never found. 100 women who changed the world Which women have had the biggest impact on world history? Here are 100 of the most influential and important – both famous and lesser-known – that have changed the world Who was Amelia Earhart? Since her childhood, Earhart had been drawn to adventure. Born in Kansas in 1897, her early life was rather precarious. “Her parents were some of those early Americans who crossed through the States in a horse and cart – they were pioneers of a different kind,” says Mulley. “Her father was a troubled character, and sadly became an alcoholic. Although her mother was a minor heiress, they burned through the money and Amelia grew up with quite a bit of instability.” The Earhart family also shied away from many social conventions of the time. “Amelia’s mother was quite ahead of her times in many ways,” says Mulley. “She would dress Amelia and her younger sister, Muriel, in bloomers and let them go out to play – which was quite shocking at the time, when girls were meant to be in white pinafores.” Earhart herself was quite the thrill-seeker. “When she was seven, her father took her to the St Louis World’s Fair, and Amelia loved the look of the rollercoaster. When she came home, she stole some wood and knocked together her own rollercoaster from the roof of her father’s tool shed.” It was at another state fair, when Earhart was ten years old, that she first encountered the machinery that would become her life’s obsession: an aircraft. However, her first impression of a plane was far from what you might expect. She later recalled: “It was a thing of rusty wire and wood, and not at all interesting.” As Mulley points out, at the turn of the 20th century, aircraft were far from the sleek metal machines that take to the skies today. “These pioneering aircraft were very fragile,” says Mulley. “Some of them used bamboo and canvas, and very thin planks of wood. They were terrifying bits of machinery.” Unimpressed by aviation, Amelia initially pursued a career devoted to helping others. She was deeply affected by seeing wounded soldiers returning home during the First World War, and went to Columbia University in New York to study medicine. However, when funds fell too low, she was forced to drop out. Amelia then found a job at Denison House in New York, where she was “teaching English and citizenship skills to settler families in America”. Read more | 20 inspirational quotes from women through history When did Amelia Earhart start flying? It wasn’t until 1920 that Amelia first flew in a plane. “Her father paid $10 for her to go up on a joyride, and she had 10 minutes in the air,” says Mulley. “It was an open biplane, and would have been very dangerous – there were no parachutes.” This was a life-changing experience for her, and the aviator recalled: “I knew I had to fly.” However, becoming a pilot – especially a female pilot – in the 1920s was no easy task. Money was a large barrier, and Amelia worked an assortment of odd jobs to pull together the funds needed to gain her pilot licence, from selling sausages to stenography. She also faced another problem, as Mulley points out. “Amelia found that no male pilots would take her up on their planes, because of social propriety issues. She eventually found a female pilot called Netta Snook, who was just one year older than Amelia, who took her up and taught her to fly.” Amelia Earhart's early fame In 1921, Amelia bought her first plane: a yellow Kinner Airster she nicknamed ‘the Canary’. It was in this plane that she set records for women’s altitude, flying to a height of 14,000 feet. However, it was a record-setting flight in 1928 that really put her name on the map. Fascinatingly, the flight wasn’t originally Earhart’s idea: instead, an American heiress called Amy Guest had been determined to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. There was a catch, however: “Guest wanted to be a passenger, not a pilot. But her family thought it was far too dangerous, and in the end Guest succumbed to the pressure and stepped aside. So she set out to search for a woman who could replace her.” Read more | A pioneering flight: Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic crossing Guest had an exacting set of criteria: the person she would choose to take her place needed to be a woman, and to have received a proper education. “Earhart fitted the bill,” says Mulley, and in June 1928 she clambered into the passenger seat of a seaplane to fly over the Atlantic. Amelia famously hated the journey, saying: “I felt like a sack of potatoes.” However, her exploits still captured people’s imaginations. When Earhart arrived on the other side, she was met with instant fame. Commercial opportunities flooded in: Amelia wrote an account of her experiences, lent her name to advertise products including Lucky Strike cigarettes, and even created her own fashion line of practical clothing for women. Her publisher, the well-connected George Putnam, was one of the driving forces behind her fame. According to Mulley, the two were very similar: “Putnam, like Earhart, wanted to break frontiers. He published a lot of adventure books on expeditions, and would go on some of those expeditions himself. And Amelia had a great need to set world records and knock down barriers.” The pair were soon romantically involved – despite the fact Putnam was already married when they first met. They wed themselves a year after he divorced his first wife. Amelia Earhart's transatlantic solo flight In the 1920s and 1930s, aviation was a dangerous game. This was a time before parachutes were standard in planes, and scores of pilots died after taking to the skies. One of Earhart’s record-setting flights – her successful attempt in 1932 to be the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic – was particularly fraught with danger. Read more | Flying into history: the Wright Brothers' Flyer and the world's first flight Mulley recounts: “When she was flying over the ocean, she saw that flames were coming out of her exhaust. That wasn’t particularly uncommon, but I think what probably frightened her the most was that the fuel gauge was leaking.” If any fuel dripped into the flaming exhaust, the craft would turn into a fireball. “At that point, she flew the last of her journey quite low over the water, because she said she’d rather drown than burn to death.” Although Earhart managed to survive that flight, eventually landing in Northern Ireland to the amazement of the farmers who found her, her final journey in 1937 was a different story. Amelia Earhart's disappearance: what happened on her last flight? In 1937, Amelia was running out of records to set. However, one remained. “No woman had ever circumnavigated around the entire world,” says Mulley. “Earhart decided that she wanted to do this as her last great world record, before she turned 40.” Earhart charted a route that would see her circumnavigate around the equator, bought a Lockheed Electra to fly in and enlisted two navigators to join her: Fred Noonan, renowned for his talent for celestial navigation, and Henry Manning. They set off from the US in March 1937, but their plans soon fell apart. Manning dropped out after they reached Hawaii, but it was a botched take-off that scuppered the attempt entirely. “We don’t know if it was pilot error or technical fault,” says Mulley, “but the aircraft went into a ground loop, spinning on the ground and crushing its undercarriage. It was clear they couldn’t continue.” Earhart and Noonan didn’t give up hope though. “She had an opportunity to stop at this point, but she thought she couldn’t, as she’d always be remembered as the woman who crashed in Hawaii rather than the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.” They set out for the second time in June 1937, this time planning to travel eastwards around the world to try and avoid monsoon season. Read more | My history hero: Julia Bradbury chooses Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) This time, the journey got off to a roaring start. They hopped across America, with Amelia dashing off newspaper articles each time they landed, before jetting down to South America and across Africa. From there, they travelled across Asia, with Amelia racing a commercial pilot to see who could be the first to reach Singapore. She won the wager. They then flew south to Australia, before arriving at Papua New Guinea. All that remained now was to fly to Hawaii. However, because the Lockheed’s fuel tank was too small for them to fly the distance in one leg, they needed to hatch a plan to refuel. “They looked at various options, like refuelling in the air, but ultimately decided to stop at a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean called Howland Island. It’s a tiny coral atoll in the ocean, and it would need real precision navigating to reach it.” A US navy ship called the Itasca was primed to stay in radio contact with Earhart until they reached Howland Island. However, problems began to arise. It soon became apparent that Earhart wasn’t receiving the Itasca’s broadcasts, but the vessel could still hear them. The ship’s crew reported that Earhart’s voice crackled down the line at various points, announcing they were approaching, but there was no sign of the Lockheed overhead. “The Itasca began to get quite concerned, so they started broadcasting constantly on different frequencies,” says Mulley. “They also burned oil in their engine room, to send up a big column of smoke. As it was a clear day, the column should have been visible for at least 10 miles, and quite probably further.” But still the plane failed to materialise. Messages continued to trickle through from Earhart, with the final saying: “We are flying north and south, trying to find you.” Read more | The curious case of Lord Lucan + 10 other mysterious disappearances from history Was Amelia Earhart ever found? Earhart, her navigator Noonan, and their plane was never spotted again. In the immediate aftermath of her disappearance, reports of radio messages from Earhart poured in, many from amateurs – although some may have been fabricated. President Theodore Roosevelt launched a huge search and rescue mission, which his wife, Eleanor – a friend of Amelia – also took part in. However, after two weeks and mounting costs, it had to be called off. Putnam, Earhart’s husband, searched until October 1937. With no leads and after months of searching, in January 1939 Earhart was legally declared dead. In the absence of concrete proof about Earhart’s fate, conspiracy theories started to bubble up. “There are a whole series of theories about what happened to her, and many are absolutely ridiculous,” says Mulley. “There was a theory that because she was friends with the Roosevelts, she was an American spy and had agreed to fly her plane to a different atoll and lay low, giving the American government an opportunity to search the Pacific Islands.” Another theory purports that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese and killed. “So-called evidence has surfaced, but none of it holds water. For instance, a photograph was found purporting to show two Caucasians in Japanese custody, but it seems that it was taken in 1936, the year before her aviation attempt.” How did Amelia Earhart die? “Earhart reported on the radio that they were running out of gas,” says Mulley. “They were still searching for the island. So it seems almost certain that their aircraft ditched into the sea.” Once they landed in the sea, their chance of survival was slim. “Although they had a life raft and inflatable jackets, these were stored at the back of the plane,” says Mulley. “If they even survived the crash, would they have been able to get the raft up and running? Possibly. But how long would they have survived? A storm came in later. There were reportedly 10-foot waves across parts of that region, and we know that this particular part of the Pacific was also infested with sharks.” Earhart’s story, and her fate, continues to captivate us – and for some, the search continues. As recently as January 2024, an ex-US air force pilot suggested that he had found Earhart’s plane in sonar images. Read more | From Jack the Ripper to Amelia Earhart: 17 unsolved historical mysteries
In 1969, everyone from Prince Michael of Kent to Billy Butlin competed in a dash between London and New York aboard tandems, sedan chairs and jump jets. Rachel Harris-Gardiner recalls a madcap forerunner of Race Across the World
If you had been walking along the streets of eastern Manhattan on 5 May 1969, you would have been greeted by a curious sight. Hovering in the skies above the great metropolis like a giant steel kestrel was one of the most technically advanced military aircraft in history. Instead of rolling down a runway, the plane slowly descended vertically to the ground in a cloud of dust. Once it touched down, its canopy opened and a pilot hopped out and zoomed off towards the Empire State Building in a red motorcycle. What on Earth was going on? And why was the pilot in such a hurry? The answer is that he was one of the frontrunners in an event called the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race, and he was just a matter of miles away from scooping a £6,000 prize for bagging first in class. The giant steel kestrel – which was, in fact, a Hawker Siddeley Harrier, among the Royal Air Force’s most prized pieces of kit – was just one of the many weird and wonderful vehicles to convey competitors across the Atlantic in the seven-day competition. Tandems, sedan chairs, speedboats and hot-air balloons were all deployed in an attempt to cover the 3,400 miles that separated the start and end points as quickly as possible. With everyone from racing drivers and athletes to millionaire businessmen and high-ranking royals throwing their hats into the ring, it’s hardly surprising that this madcap, high-speed contest made headlines around the world. Simple but deceptive The format of the race – which was staged to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first non-stop Atlantic flight, completed by a Vickers Vimy biplane bomber in 1919 – was both simple and deceptively complex. Entrants, known as ‘runners’, paid their entry fee and were given a week to travel between London and New York in the shortest time possible, with at least part of the journey undertaken by air. Runners could attempt the trip in either direction and could make as many attempts as they liked in the time available. Prizes were awarded for different classes of aircraft (of which there were six, plus the fastest time overall) and different routes, from both starting points. An extra layer of complexity was added by the fact that runners had to stamp their time card at each end of the journey: the summit of the Post Office Tower in London and the top of New York’s Empire State Building. Securing a seat in the fastest aircraft available wasn’t a guarantee of victory; the contestants had to work out the quickest way to reach the checkpoint from their landing point, using whatever transport they could. The Daily Mail had organised races for decades. It had sponsored a motor boat race (the Harmsworth Trophy) from 1903, put on a Round Britain air race from 1911–13, and staged a 1959 dash between London and Paris, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot’s first Channel crossing. However, the 1969 competition was the biggest yet, and attracted the support of commercial sponsors such as Aer Lingus, who provided prize funds and helped to recruit celebrities. This growth is reflected in the number of competitors. While the 1959 event inspired 135 attempts at the journey, the transatlantic race attracted more than 300 individual entries. Among them was Squadron Leader Tom Lecky-Thompson, the pilot of the Harrier that made the dramatic landing in eastern Manhattan. Lecky-Thompson registered the fastest London to New York leg of the race (6 hours, 11 minutes – undertaking multiple air-to-air refuellings). “It was incredible coming up the East river with Manhattan in the background, then seeing your landing spot amid this big line of piers,” remembered Lecky-Thompson. “There were numerous light aircraft whizzing around to get photographs of me but I had to ignore them and concentrate on flying... Everything went according to plan.” Despite this showstopping entrance, Lecky-Thompson almost never made it to the start line. Only three pilots at the time were qualified to fly the Harrier, and the most senior, Mike Adams, had been injured in an accident at the end of February, leaving Lecky-Thompson and Graham Williams to handle the race. The RAF left it until the last minute to register, having been persuaded that the exercise would be a useful way to promote the Harrier (which was the world’s first vertical take-off combat aeroplane to enter operational service) to the American military. The initial idea was for the Harrier to take off from Horse Guards Parade, but the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works vetoed this. British Rail then offered a coal yard near St Pancras station, which soon assumed the nickname ‘RAF St Pancras’. Britain’s military dominated the supersonic classes. The RAF Harrier was probably the most eye-catching winner. Yet the fastest outright time was set by one of the three Royal Navy F-4K Phantom aircraft that entered the race. A crew under Lieutenant Commander Peter Goddard registered an air time of 4 hours, 46 minutes and 57 seconds, which enabled them to post an unbeatable overall time of 5 hours, 11 minutes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/GettyImages-962194726cmyk-1595092.jpg" width="4920" height="4912" alt="Prince Michael of Kent after completing the air race. He made the crossing in a Vickers VC10 jet airliner, representing the Royal Hussars. (Photo by Arthur Sidey/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)" title="Prince Michael of Kent after completing the air race. He made the crossing in a Vickers VC10 jet airliner, representing the Royal Hussars. (Photo by Arthur Sidey/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)" /> The British Army was also determined to get in on the act, and made its mark by employing Prince Michael of Kent as a runner, representing the Royal Hussars. The prince’s transfer from a Vickers VC10 jet airliner to a helicopter on landing at Wisley in Surrey gained some attention (the prince exited the plane via a rope), but he was not among the class winners. Racing in tandem Transfers between airports and the checkpoints provided the greatest opportunity for creativity and showmanship. Mary Rand, winner of the long jump in the 1964 Olympic games, ran through London’s streets for part of her journey before getting the Tube and a car to Stansted airport, where she jumped on a Capitol International Airways flight to New York. A TV personality named Slim Hewitt travelled across London in a sedan chair carried by a team of women wearing mini skirts. His route included a hovercraft across the channel to Boulogne and a hot air balloon to Luxembourg before heading to the States. Formula 1 driver Stirling Moss employed a combination of a speedboat and a motorcycle to reach his waiting private jet. Two London businessmen, David Bamford and Gordon Proctor, used a tandem bicycle to reach the airport. Bamford and Proctor weren’t the only businessmen to take part in the race. The Chartered Business Jet class for the London to New York route was won by Sir Billy Butlin of holiday camp fame, whose journey on a Hawker Siddeley HS 125 took 11 and a half hours. Other competitors were notable for their connections to previous flight pioneers. The first runner to set off from London, the 18-year-old art student Anne Alcock, was the niece of John Alcock, who had piloted that pioneering flight across the Atlantic in 1919. And, to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1919 flight, a team of apprentices based at Brooklands in Surrey built a replica of the trailblazing Vickers Vimy bomber. Another Vickers aeroplane carried one of the largest and most outlandish teams. Businessman Tony Drewery assembled a ‘Brigade’ of businessmen hoping to promote British exports in the States. The Brigade dressed in identical pinstripe suits, bowler hats and Union Jack ties and travelled between the airfield and the Empire State Building in two double-decker buses. Drewery had made a bet with an American runner flying in the opposite direction that he would beat his time, with the loser having to buy the winner a new suit. Drewery got his suit. The long game Other contestants aimed to use the event to promote their own smaller businesses. One of these was Donald McNab, a director of an advertising agency, who told the Middlesex County Times he hoped to sell toys made by Terry Toys once he arrived in New York. “I have not failed yet and I do not intend to fail now,” he announced bullishly before embarking on his journey. McNab was right – he didn’t fail – but his time of 57 hours and 20 minutes hardly threatened to win him a prize for fastest in class. However, McNab still managed to cross the Atlantic almost 100 hours quicker than poor Fred Clauser. The American pilot had to make an emergency landing near the Faroe Islands and almost had his aircraft taken away as scrap. He eventually rejoined the race and posted a time of 153 hours and 17 minutes. No such issues confronted the most unlikely of all the 300 contestants, a five-year-old chimpanzee called Tina. The ape, who had appeared in Brooke Bond tea adverts on TV, was conveyed to Heathrow airport in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce with her owner, Twycross Zoo’s Molly Badham, before crossing the Atlantic on a British Overseas Airways Corporation flight. We will never know what Tina made of her flight. What we can say with some certainty, however, is that the Transatlantic Air Race’s combination of state-of-the-art engineering, celebrity stardust and unbridled eccentricity proved a hit with the watching British public. It was, in some ways, staged at the perfect time – at a moment when air travel was becoming more affordable, when it was moving from the realm of the idiosyncratic war veteran to the massed ranks of holidaymakers. This was also a period when televisions were becoming increasingly common in UK homes. The race’s organising committee was able to harness this rising medium to their advantage, securing several hours of coverage on the BBC, kicked off with a launch show presented by Cliff Michelmore. Many commentators today describe the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race as the last of the great air adventures. It’s true that, despite its popularity and blanket media exposure, it was never repeated. Changing economic conditions and global tensions heading into the 1970s meant that people had less disposable income, and different priorities. But could it be staged in the future? Despite the popularity of the recent globe-trotting TV show Race Across the World, it’s unlikely that it could take place again in a similar form – current concerns over carbon emissions and climate change would see to that. However, alternative air fuel technologies could create opportunities for more airborne adventuring and record-breaking. Once large-scale electric aviation becomes viable, a whole new set of records for distance, altitude and speed will open up. Commercial and government air organisations will be looking to make their name in this new field. So maybe we haven’t seen the last of the transatlantic air race. Anyone for an electric-powered tandem? Rachel Harris-Gardiner is a motorsport journalist and editor of the Speedqueens blog, with a special interest in female race and rally drivers around the world. Watch past episodes of the BBC One show Race Across the World This article was first published in the Christmas 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
Bessie Coleman: a boundary-breaking pilot who fought for her dream
By refusing to be held back by discrimination, both for her gender and her race, Bessie Coleman took aviation to new heights in its early days – did her utmost to ensure that other people of colour could follow in her footsteps. Jonny Wilkes delves into the life of the fearless female flyer
While working as a manicurist in Chicago in 1919, twenty-something Bessie Coleman decided what she wanted to do with her life: fly. She had heard about heroic World War I aces and death defying aviators wowing crowds with their aerobatic antics, and desperately wanted to be part of it. The chances of her taking to the skies were extremely slim. For one thing, she was a woman; for another, she was black. But when her brother teased her by saying a black woman would never fly, Coleman’s mind was made up. “That’s it! You just called it for me!” On the podcast | Sally Smith shares the stories of the fascinating female pioneers of aviation All she had was an insatiable motivation – she certainly didn’t have money. Elizabeth Coleman was born, on 26 January 1892, into an impoverished family in Texas, the 10th of 13 children to African-American mother Susan and father George, who was part-Cherokee. They worked as sharecroppers and labourers, and a young ‘Bessie’ had to help pick cotton and walk for miles just to attend a one-room school. Although naturally bright and inquisitive, she could only afford one semester at university. Her move from Waxahachie, Texas, to Chicago came in the early stages of the Great Migration – when African-Americans left the South in their millions to find greater opportunities in the North – but racial prejudice in the US could not so easily be escaped. In 1919, the city erupted into race riots. How did Bessie Coleman become a pilot? Yet that same year, Coleman found hope in tales of aviation, especially of the female pilots in France that her brother saw while fighting in the war. It quickly became clear that he wasn’t entirely wrong for thinking a black woman would never fly, given that his sister’s many applications to flight schools were instantly dismissed. “I refused to take no for an answer,” became Coleman’s mantra. If she could not learn in the US, she would head to France where the aviation scene was highly renowned, and more welcoming. To pay for the trip, she scrimped and saved from various jobs before securing the support of Robert Abbott, owner of the African American newspaper the Chicago Defender. At night, she taught herself French. Read more | Flying into history: the Wright Brothers' Flyer and the world's first flight In 1920, Coleman travelled to France and started training at the Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy. For seven months, she flew a Nieuport 82 biplane that didn’t even have brakes, so on each landing she relied on a metal bar underneath hooking the ground. But she had found her calling, and on 15 June 1921, Coleman became the first woman of black, and Native American, heritage to earn an international pilot’s licence. This allowed her to return to the US and – after a hasty jaunt back to Europe for some extra aerobatics training – take up barnstorming. A popular form of entertainment in the 1920s, pilots would perform all manner of tricks and stunts, from loops and tailspins to walking on the wings and parachuting back to Earth. From her debut flight in September 1922, and in borrowed planes as she didn’t have her own, Coleman became a headline-grabbing barnstormer, earning nicknames like ‘Queen Bess’ and ‘Brave Bessie’. More than an entertainer, Coleman wanted to inspire people of colour to take up aviation, especially women. “The air is the only place free of prejudice,” she said. She gave talks about her flights and performed across the country, refusing to participate in air shows with segregated entrances. And when offered the lead role in a film, Coleman turned it down because it would have required dressing in rags, which she saw as a demeaning representation of poor black people. Her greatest ambition was to set up her own flight school. Bessie Coleman's tragic death Just a few months into her barnstorming, however, Coleman suffered a crash – and in her first plane, a Curtiss JN-4 ‘Jenny’. After the engines stalled, she nosedived 300 feet and broke several ribs and one of her legs. Although absolutely determined to return to the skies as soon as she recovered, it would take a couple of years before Coleman was properly flying again. Still, she bought herself a second Jenny. But on 30 April 1926, while preparing for a show in Jacksonville, Florida, her plane span out of control and Coleman was thrown from the open cockpit at around 2,000 feet, plummeting to her death. Mechanic William Wills, who was flying the Jenny, died in the crash. Read more | 'Queen of the Air': the remarkable life of pioneering English aviator Amy Johnson Coleman’s flying career was short, but long enough for her to become a heroine in the African-American community. Thousands attended her funeral, and her eulogy was read by co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Ida B Wells. Coleman’s fate was that of many early aviators, but she was nothing like them. She broke through the limitations placed on her for both her race and gender, and earned the respect of the flying community. William Powell, who founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club a few years after her death, wrote that thanks to her, “We have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.” This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
Pioneering women pilots: from ballooning spectacles to flying escapades
Sally Smith shares the stories of the fascinating female pioneers of British aviation
Sally Smith considers the contributions made and significant firsts achieved by British women in the field of aviation, from ballooning and parachuting, to piloting airships and fixed-wing aircraft. Speaking with Emily Briffett, she highlights the extraordinary lives these pioneers led and the trials they faced in order to achieve success. Sally Smith is the author of Magnificent Women and Flying Machines: The First 200 Years of British Women in the Sky (The History Press, 2021) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
War in the air: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Paul Beaver answers listeners questions on military aviation – from early innovations to flying aces and dogfights
What are the origins of aircraft being used in war? How common were dogfights? And were early fighter pilots really the ‘knights of the air’? Speaking with Emily Briffett, Paul Beaver answers your top questions about military aviation in our latest Everything you wanted to know episode.