The Phantom Airship Panic of 1913: Imagining Aerial Warfare in Britain before the Great War

Abstract

In late 1912 and early 1913, people all over Britain reported seeing airships in the night sky, yet there were none. It was widely assumed that these “phantom airships” were German Zeppelins, testing British defenses in preparation for the next war. The public and press responses to the phantom airship sightings provide a glimpse of the way that aerial warfare was understood before it was ever experienced in Britain. Conservative newspapers and patriotic leagues used the sightings to argue for a massive expansion of Britain's aerial forces, which were perceived to be completely outclassed by Germany's in both number and power. In many ways this airship panic was analogous to the much better known 1909 dreadnought panic. The result was the perfect Edwardian panic: the simultaneous culmination of older fears about Germany and the threat of espionage, invasion, and, above all, the loss of Britain's naval superiority. But, in reality, there was little understanding about the way that Zeppelins would be used against Britain in the First World War—not to attack its arsenals and dockyards, but to bomb its cities.

Derationalizing Delusions

“…The sudden spread of intense delusion-like ideas through the population are well documented and frequently occur over time and across cultures and have variously been called “mass delusion” and “social delusion” and have been studied alongside “mass hysteria” ( Bartholomew, 2001 ). Episodes of socially transmitted delusion-like belief outbreaks have included beliefs in a “phantom anaesthetist” who was believed to be prowling the community and “gassing” members of the public ( Bartholomew & Victor, 2004 ), a “windshield pitting epidemic” attributed to nonexistent “H-bomb tests” ( Medalia & Larsen, 1958 ), frequent waves of beliefs about malicious penis-stealing episodes ( Dan et al, 2017 ), the kidnapping of children to use their decapitated heads in the foundations of new buildings ( Barnes, 1993 ), and an invasion of foreign airships before capable technology was available ( Holman, 2016 ), to name but a few. Note that these are distinct from conspiracy theories in that rather than being “explanations for important events that involve secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups” ( Douglas et al, 2017 , p. 58), they typically involve new and idiosyncratic phenomena that reflect a direct and personal risk to the individual believer.…”

De-Rationalising Delusions

“…The sudden spread of intense delusion-like ideas through the population are well-documented and frequently occur over time and across cultures and have variously been called 'mass delusion', 'social delusion' and have been studied alongside 'mass hysteria' (Bartholomew, 2001). Episodes of socially-transmitted delusion-like belief outbreaks have included beliefs in a 'phantom anaesthetist' who was believed to be prowling the community and 'gassing' members of the public (Bartholomew & Victor, 2004), a 'windshield pitting epidemic' attributed to non-existent 'H-bomb tests' (Medalia & Larsen, 1958), frequent waves of beliefs about malicious penis stealing episodes (Dan, Mondal, Chakraborty, Chaudhuri, & Biswas, 2017), the kidnapping of children to use their decapitated heads in the foundations of new buildings (Barnes, 1993), and an invasion of foreign airships, before capable technology was available (Holman, 2016) to name but a few. Notably, these are distinct from conspiracy theories in that rather than being "explanations for important events that involve secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups" (Douglas, Sutton, & Cichocka, 2017) they typically involve new and idiosyncratic phenomena that reflect a direct and personal risk to the individual believer.…”