Advert - Join the WRAF (1959)

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Join the Women's Royal Air Force in 1959 and enjoy all the thrills of sitting in a bunker in East Anglia and staring at a Radar screen for hours on end. But at least you'll get your own personal mirror light!

Cutting - Lady Drummond Hay reports from the Hindenburg (1936)

8th May 1936

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The 'Maiden Voyage' of the Hindenburg airship from Germany to the USA in May 1936. It wasn't actually the first commercial trans-Atlantic flight that the Hindenburg had made; it had been to South America earlier in the year. 

Lady Drummond Hay was a journalist for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. She had covered the 1929 Graf Zeppelin Around the Globe flight sponsored by Hearst and a marvellous documentary film of the flight and her participation can be seen on good old YouTube. 

The 'Saint' author Leslie Charteris was among the many celebrities on the Hindenburg flight and a very entertaining fictional account of his fictional investigation into a fictional murder on board can be read in Max Allen Collin's book 'The Hindenburg Murder'. 

It was at Lakehurst almost a year to the day later that the Hindenburg crashed in flames on 6th May 1937 and in doing so ended the era of the great passenger airships.

For anyone interested in the so called 'Maiden Flight' I recommend this website.

Advert - Lockheed Constellation aircraft (1940's)

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The Lockheed Constellation evolved from the WW2 Lockheed 10A and Hudson bomber. In April 1946 the first aircraft of a foreign airline, a Panair Lockheed 049 Constellation, landed at the newly opened Heathrow Airport after a flight from Rio de Janeiro

Cutting - Flying Baroness Killed (1919)

July 1919

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Elise Raymonde Deroche, known as Baroness De Laroche, was a pioneering French aviatrix and the first woman in the world to receive a pilot's licence. Unable to join the air force during WWI she became an Army driver for the duration. She returned to flying in 1919 but as shown here was killed on July 18th while a passenger in an experimental plane

Random Cutting - Future of aviation (1919)

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Published in March 1919 this article in support of aviation as the future in both war and peace is suprisingly perseptive. Boer War and world War I veteran and politician General John Seely had recently been made Under-Secretary of State for Air but he resigned at the end of 1919 after the Government refused to create a Secretary of State for Air.

Random Cutting - US Plane Crash (1929)

18th March 1929

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The Colonial Western Airways plane, a Ford 5-AT-B Tri-Motor had just taken off from Newark on a sightseeing trip around New York with 13 passengers, a pilot and a friend of the pilot (also in the cockpit), when it failed to gain height and crashed onto railway sidings. The sightseers were all killed instantly, the friend died the next day and the pilot survived.

Mystery of Amundsen in the Artic (1925)

Sunday Express dated Sunday May 24th 1925

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On the January 25th 1912 Roald Amundsen had been the first man to reach the South Pole and by the mid-1920’s, when Frederick Cook’s 1908 and Robert Peary’s 1909 claims to have reached the North Pole were being discredited, he had set his sights on the Arctic.

In 1925 a 6 man team led by Amundsen took two Dornier flying boats to 87° 44′ north. It was the most northerly latitude reached by plane up to that time. The aircraft landed a few miles apart without radio contact, but the crews managed to reunite. One of the planes was damaged, so Amundsen and his crew worked for over three weeks to create an airstrip from the ice. During this time the outside World feared the worst. Finally all six crew members were packed into the undamaged plane and they flew back to their base and civilisation.

Amundsen survived that time but the Arctic would eventually claim his life. While flying on a rescue mission in 1928, he was killed when his plane crashed into the Arctic Ocean.

Random Ad - B.O.A.C. travel (1950's)

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Get into debt the 1950's way! 'Only 21 monthly payements of £8 5s 7d' - that was more than a week's wage for most workers in Britain at the time. In 1955, as a child, I flew on my own with B.O.A.C to Burma where my father was working. It took 3 days and nights with a breakdown in Beruit for several hours and another in Karachi that meant an overnight stay in a hotel. 

Randon Ad - De Havilland Mosquito (1940's)

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The mostly wooden De Havilland Mosquito went into active service in 1941. I can't quite understand why De Havilland felt they had to advertise unless they thought the newspaper readers were in the market for a fast fighter/bomber, or were they, as the tagline at the bottom suggests, looking to the post war commercial future?

England scores 280 first innings

Sunday Pictorial dated Sunday August 15^th 1926

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I must admit that on reading this headline ‘England scores 280 first innings’ I had no idea whether it was a ‘Hooray for England’ or a ‘England team let us down again’ headline. I don’t understand cricket scoring.

A look on this web page told me England won the 5^th Test in 1926 by 289 runs.

Ask me in 5 minutes who won and by how many runs and I will have forgotten, but I am sure there are people out there that will find these pages interesting. 

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The death of John Thomas Derham resulted from a fight with his friend Alphonso (or Alphonse) Smith over Smith’s wife Catherine.

Smith was found not guilty of murder or manslaughter in November 1926 but sentenced to 12 months for possession of a firearm with intent to injure. The comparatively lenient sentence was passed because the judge believed that Smith only intended to kill himself.

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In fact the Reverend John Alexander Smith died of his head wound the next day. 

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At least this fire in a paint factory in Southwark ended without loss of life and even three cats were saved.

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In June 1916 Lord Kitchener sailed on the battle cruiser HMS Hampshire for a diplomatic mission to Russia, but the ship struck a mine laid by U-boat U-75 and sank. Kitchener, his staff, and 643 of the crew of 655 were drowned or died of exposure. His body was never found.

In 1926, a hoaxer, Frank Power, claimed that a Norwegian fisherman had found Kitchener’s body. Power brought a coffin back from Norway and prepared it for burial in St. Paul's. At this point, however, the authorities intervened and the coffin was opened in the presence of police and a distinguished pathologist. The box was found to contain only tar for weight. Power was never prosecuted.

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I have a funny feeling that whoever tried to fill this in didn’t stand an chance of winning that rather nice Bullnose Morris Cowley, and should have sent off for the 64 page booklet on how to complete crosswords. Rather an odd feature of this grid is the use of clues marked ‘actual’ so R.T.B. (actual) is literally RTB. The other oddity I’ve noticed is 20 across and 20 down is the same isolated square with a ‘D’ pre-printed.

The first crossword to appear in a UK newspaper was only 2 years previously in 1924.

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Arthur Ferrier was born and started working as a cartoonist in Glasgow, then he moved to London and drew joke cartoons for newspapers and  magazines.

In 1930 he created Britain’s first ‘glamour’ cartoon strip called ‘Film Fanny’. The most famous ‘glamour’ strip was the Daily Mirror’s ‘Jane’. The Sunday Pictorial also published his ‘Our Dumb Blonde’ strip, which ran from 1939 to 1946, followed by ‘Spotlight on Sally’ and ‘Eve’.

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“By Gad, Sir! Whatever next? They’ll be teaching the little blighters to use the Interweb, what ever that it. A damn good thrashing would do them a sight more good. Pass the cane!”

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Only 13 years before World War II and, apart from talk of getting rid of horses, this could be from World War I.

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Probably the Bristol Bulldog single seater biplane fighter introduced into service in 1927.

The racing seaplane mentioned here is the Gloster VI, which was entered for the 1929 Schneider Trophy race, but was beaten by the Supermarine S6. 

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Ah, the old ‘daring-short-skirt-flat-chested-coal-scuttle for a hat’ look. Although the one on the right has gone for the mis-tossed pancake hat. Nice drawings though by Renee Maude.

Old Bailey and Whitehall IRA bombings

Daily Mirror dated Friday March 9^th 1973

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In the first IRA mainland bombings since 1940, four car bombs were planted in London on March 8th. Two were defused, one in a car outside a Post Office in Broadway and the other outside the BBC's armed forces radio studio in Dean Stanley Street. However, the other two exploded, one near the Old Bailey and the other at the Ministry of Agriculture off Whitehall. As a result of the explosions one person was killed and almost 200 people were injured.

At the time I worked near the Old Bailey at the top of Ludgate Hill, directly opposite St Paul’s Cathedral. I had a habit of popping out mid-afternoon to buy a Mars bar and was crossing the old Paternoster piazza when there was a very loud boom that I felt as much as heard. As the crow flies I was only about 300m from the blast. Luckily there were a lot of buildings in the way.

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The people arrested at Heathrow included Marian and Dolours Price, Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and Roisin McNearney. In November 1973 all except McNearney, who had turned Queen’s evidence, were convicted of the Old Bailey and Whitehall bombings. 

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Rail chaos, miners' strikes, dock strikes, go-slows, walk outs - this was the hay-day of the militant unions, but they had no way of knowing that Margaret Thatcher’s reign was only 6 years away (give or take 4 or 5 days).

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The London School of Economics had been a hot-bed of student unrest since 1966 and this was yet another in a series of protests. 

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On March 5^th sixty-eight people had been killed when a Douglas DC-9, flying from Palma to London, collided in midair with a Convair 990 Coronado aircraft over Nantes in western France. The accident occurred during a French air traffic controller’s strike and stand-in military controllers were being used.

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The problem is whether to watch ‘The Virginian’ and then ‘Morcambe and Wise’ or ‘Hawaii Five-O’ and ‘On the Buses’? There’d be no hesitation in watching one of my favourite films though – Jean Luc Goddard’s ‘Alphaville’.

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Straight forward story – fan sends Paul McCartney seeds, he plants them, they come up as cannabis, police see them, he appears in court and is fined. I think there is a printing error though. McCartney is quoted as saying ‘there should be legislation on the use of cannabis’. Surely there was or he wouldn’t be in court.

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Fans got more than they bargained for when, in 2002, the iconic Wembley Stadium was demolished and a new stadium built on the site.

Birth of Baby on TV

Daily Mirror dated Monday February 4^th 1957

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The BBC’s ‘Panorama’ programme started in 1953 and is still running. It hasn’t been backward in dealing with controversial subjects and in 1957 this included the then very private act of giving birth to a baby being shown on TV for the first time (albeit in black and white and very discreetly). Not a programme I would have wanted to watch then at 11 years old. Luckily we didn’t have a TV set.

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Western Swing bandleader turned Rock’n’Roller Bill Haley was heading for Britain and the Mirror was hip to the beat, daddio. Bill Haley at 30 years old, chubby and balding was an unlikely teen hero but he was all they had until Elvis Presley and the younger generation of rockers arrived.

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Hungary was in the grip of a Soviet crack down following the ‘Uprising’ of the previous October/November and was no place to be looking like a beatnik in a duffle coat, a beard and a bow tie. Roger Cooper, Christopher and Basil Lloyd and Judith Cripps had been arrested on January 17^th when they crossed into Hungary from Yugoslavia without proper authorisation. They were threatened with a trial for spying but released, along with two Americans arrested earlier in the month, 

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Flying under the Clifton Suspension Bridge near Bristol was quite common in the days of bi-planes, but John Crossley successfully flew under in a de Havilland Vampire jet. After going through he tried a victory roll along the gorge but crashed into the bank, killing himself instantly. His was the last flight by anyone under the bridge.

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What the **** is going on at the top of this advert? Ah! I see now. It’s a reference to the popular rhyme of the time - ‘Eany Meany Miny Mo - catch a ni**er by his toe - if he hollers let him go - Eany Meany Miny Mo’. And there he is being caught by the toe!

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Both Liz Taylor and Mike Todd had been married twice before. Just 13 months later Todd was killed in a plane crash.

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In England at this time a youngster could only get married at 16 if they had parental consent, but in Scotland you could marry at 16 without it, but you had to be resident for 21 consecutive days. Gretna Green being traditionally the first village you come to in Scotland when crossing the border north of Carlisle, had long been the venue for runaway marriages.

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The Windmill Theatre, just off Piccadilly Circus, featured a mixture of variety acts, comedians and nude or semi-nude tableaux in shows, usually called Revudeville, from 1932 until it closed down in 1964. Managed by Vivian Van Dam it was the launching pad for the likes of Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Jimmy Edwards, Arthur English, Bill Pertwee, Alfred Marks, Michael Bentine, Bill Kerr and Bill Maynard.

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3 of the comic strips in this issue – Private eye ‘Buck Ryan’ drawn by Jack Monk from 1937 until it ended in 1962, ‘Ruggles’ (not to be confused with the US strip ‘Casey Ruggles’) drawn by Stephen P Dowling from 1935 to 1957 and ‘Belinda’ (originally called ‘Belinda Blue Eyes’) which Tony Royle took over drawing from S P Dowling in 1943 until it ended in 1959. 

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Regular readers will know of my complete and life-long disinterest in football, but I must admit as a child I did know the name of one footballer – Stanley Matthews, and this is the man himself in action. 

Random Cutting - Yuri Gagarin killed (1961)

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Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born in 1934 and died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed. In 1961 he was the first human to go into Space, when, on his one and only spaceflight, he completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.

Random Cutting - Germany's Commercial Airships (1934)

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This really must have looked like the future of air travel in the early 1930’s with the luxury of ocean liners and the speed of aeroplanes of the time.

The final paragraph of this cutting taken from the pro-European multi-lingual paper The European Herald critising Britain for not jumping in is prophetic but in the wrong way. With the fatal crash of the Hindenburg airship in 1937 putting an end to that future, it looks like Britain was right to ‘wait and see’. 

U.S. Denounce Hitler's Invasion of Austria

Daily Sketch dated Friday March 18^th 1938

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Adolf Hitler was born in Austria but like many Austrians of the time regarded himself as German. When he came to power in 1933 he intended to make Austria a part of Germany once and for all, but Italy led by Benito Mussolini had vowed to defend Austria’s right to independence. By 1938 relations between Mussolini and Hitler had become so friendly that the Italian leader let it be known that he would no longer stand in the way of a German invasion. Hitler threatened the Austrian government with all out war if they didn’t capitulate and agree to Austria becoming part of Germany. The Austrian chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, and his entire government, except the one Nazi Party member, resigned. The remaining man, Arthur Seyss-Inquart as de-facto head of government, invited the German army to enter Vienna on March 15^th 1938.

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The bombing of Barcelona on the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th March 1938 followed France’s decision to re-open their border with Spain and allow supplies through to the Republicans fighting against General Franco. It was carried out by the Italian air force in planes disguised as Spanish. 

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Poland had taken over the Vilnius border region with Lithuania in 1920 and since then there had been no diplomatic relations between the two countries. With an eye on Germany expansion into Austria, Poland decided that it was a good time to have an ally on it’s northern border so issued this ultimatum to Lithuania. On March 19^th the Lithuanian government agreed to the demands. 

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The Australian aviator Harry Frank (the ‘E’ initial in the article is a mistake) Broadbent was trying to beat the record of Miss Jean Batten in a flight from England to Australia. A Qantas mail plane discovered him on Torren Island, fifty miles from Wangipo (wherever that is).

Broadbent went on to pilot flying-boats for Quantas and then for a small Southampton based airline serving Lisbon, Madeira and Las Palmas. In 1958 he was an instructor to a Portuguese airline and was forced into an emergency landing in the Atlantic, west of Portugal. The aircraft and occupants were never found.

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The use of the cat-o-nine-tails was officially abolished in UK prisons in 1967 although it hadn’t been used since 1962 and only rarely since 1948.

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Despite the Mayor's incredulity, Greta Garbo never married and according to some contemporary sources, such as writer Mercedes de Acosta, was of a sapphic bent.

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‘Her return to the screen’ refers to the break that Norma Shearer took after the death if her first husband Irving Thalberg. She retired from the business in 1942 and died in 1983.

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“Ouch!”

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‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature from the Disney Studios, was released in the UK on March 12^th 1938.

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This is the committal hearing of the men arrested in this post.

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Hitler invades Austria? Spanish civil war? Don’t worry! The toffs are having a good time so all must right with the World. The only name I recognize is Cecil Beaton. I must move in the wrong circles.

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Any excuse to include an example of my favourite comic strip. Simple and elegantly drawn.

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One channel and 3 hours of TV a day for those few people who had sets. No fighting over the remote, then.

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This is the very same HMS Belfast that is now moored in the Thames by the Embankment and can be visited as part of the Imperial War Museum. Having been launched as shown above by Prime Minister Chamberlain’s wife on March 17^th 1938, she, the ship not Mrs C, was commissioned for service in August 1939 just in time for the War and was involved in the Artic Convoys and the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst.

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The Welshman Tommy Farr had won his first fight in 1926 at the age of 12 and fought his last in 1953. He’d beaten the American Max Baer in 1937 in England, but lost this fight at Madison Square Gardens.

Baer’s son Max Baer Jr. found fame on TV as Jethro Bodine in ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’.