HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-01T10:53:19.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Creating fake Paris: why did one man build a hoax French capital?
items: He shot down 3 planes in 4 minutes: meet the WW2 pilot you won't have heard about
items: "England is invincible": How the Luftwaffe lost the Battle of Britain
items: The balloon-riding Victorians who courted disaster: the true story behind The Aeronauts
items: Eric 'Winkle' Brown: Britain's most extraordinary pilot
items: Amelia Earhart's disappearance: who was American aviator, and what happened to her?
items: The race across the Atlantic
items: Bessie Coleman: a boundary-breaking pilot who fought for her dream
items: Pioneering women pilots: from ballooning spectacles to flying escapades
items: War in the air: everything you wanted to know

Creating fake Paris: why did one man build a hoax French capital?
type: item
date: 2026-04-01T10:35:41.000Z
creator: Gavin Mortimer
subject: First World War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: 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...
encoded: 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…

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He shot down 3 planes in 4 minutes: meet the WW2 pilot you won't have heard about
type: item
date: 2025-12-19T09:00:18.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Column
subject: Historical events
subject: Second World War battles
description: "Everyone cried unashamedly at the news of this young pilot’s death", writes Kavita Puri
encoded: 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 …

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"England is invincible": How the Luftwaffe lost the Battle of Britain
type: item
date: 2025-07-02T08:00:31.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Second World War battles
description: 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
encoded: 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 cont…

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The balloon-riding Victorians who courted disaster: the true story behind The Aeronauts
type: item
date: 2024-09-04T15:43:50.000Z
creator: Nige Tassell
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: 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…
encoded: 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…

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Eric 'Winkle' Brown: Britain's most extraordinary pilot
type: item
date: 2024-03-30T09:50:31.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Paul Beaver charts the remarkable life of Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown – a death-defying Second World War pilot
encoded: 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

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Amelia Earhart's disappearance: who was American aviator, and what happened to her?
type: item
date: 2024-02-21T15:53:41.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
description: 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?
encoded: 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 t…

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The race across the Atlantic
type: item
date: 2024-02-12T17:22:04.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: 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
encoded: 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 a…

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Bessie Coleman: a boundary-breaking pilot who fought for her dream
type: item
date: 2023-06-15T07:48:17.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: 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
encoded: 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…

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Pioneering women pilots: from ballooning spectacles to flying escapades
type: item
date: 2022-06-21T11:39:52.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Sally Smith shares the stories of the fascinating female pioneers of British aviation
encoded: 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

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War in the air: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2022-05-08T11:34:40.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Paul Beaver answers listeners questions on military aviation – from early innovations to flying aces and dogfights
encoded: 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.

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