Aviation

During the Franco-Prussian War a British wine merchant was imprisoned in Cologne, accused of being a spy. The public clamoured for the government to secure his release, but wartime diplomacy was not so straightforward. 

There is nothing new about uncrewed aircraft.

Roger Hudson describes advances in British military aviation technology in the years before the Second World War.

The glamorous success of Alcock and Brown’s first non-stop transatlantic flight in the wake of the Great War made the world smaller but no less nationalistic, argues Maurice Walsh.

The aviation pioneer died on May 21st, 1965.

Terence McLaughlin describes aeronautical experiments from gliders to powered machines.

B.J. Haimes describes how a British airship, the R34, raised the possibility of transatlantic travel by dirigible.

D.L.B. Hartley describes the background to a postwar transatlantic aviation competition, famously won by Alcock and Brown’s Vickers Vimy aeroplane.

Count Zeppelin and his successors in Germany and Britain backed an invention that failed; but David Sawers describes how, during its lifetime, the airship attracted the enthusiasm of many aeronautical engineers.