Aviation Art ~ A Glimpse, a Hint Even, When Civilisation Flies into the Jaws of Hell Itself

ArtBomber CommandStrategic Air Offensive

Sep. 5

Part I

Throughout war, artists in the field, artists embedded within front-line troops on land, squadrons or at sea, capture hitherto unknown moments throughout history, that enable those far away from battlefields to obtain a glimpse, even a hint, of what is going on, and almost always simply because of one single human being.

Mid Air Collision Two Avro Lancasters 16-17 Jan 1945 by KTW 6.10.2022.png

Searchlights Over Koblenz 1944 by KTW 6.10.2022.png

Avro Lancaster disintegrating mid-air over Hamburg by KTW 6.10.2022.png

Berlin ~ A Rain of Fire 1944 by KTW 6.10.2022.png

Berlin 1944 ~ Maximum Effort Lancasters Over the Reichstag by KTW 6.10.2022.png

Heavy Air Raid over Berlin by KTW 6.10.2022.png

Part II

Galleries also appear as the subjects evolve on this aviation website.

Art Form is vitally important to the expression of our freedom and democracy. Art Form exists in all regimes. In closed regimes, its central core is dictatorial. That type of art only exists because it conforms to an ideology that is forced upon the electorate.

It is dangerous.

This website is about aspects of aviation that personally interest me. I am a writer and a poet, and occasionally, I transfer across from the man website, poetry and prose if it has an aviation theme. An example is First Solo Flight, my recollection written a very long time ago of qualifying for my Gliding Proficiency A & B Certificate in 1969 within the then Air Training Corps (now RAF Air Cadets). The flagship website can be found here.

Part III

When the Wright Brothers successfully achieved human-crewed mechanical flight in 1901, few would have imagined the impact this would have on their lives over the next seventeen years, and then beyond to 1945.

In 1901, my grandparents were in the prime of life, their parents gently moving into old age or great-grandparents been told that two world wars would have been fought by the end of 1945, they would not have envisaged how these wars would have been fought. The children they lost in both world wars had not yet been born.

The savagery of those world wars has made every other major war preceding in history pale into insignificance.

They could not have foreseen the achievement of the Wright Brothers would totally change warfare and, with the force of a bludgeon, bringing the civlian populations onto the battlefield. We read of the great air battles over France in the Great War, themselves then dwarfed by the Battle of Britain in 1940, the Blitz on Britain 1940-1945, the VI and V2 flying missiles, the Strategic Air Offensive waged by the Royal Air Force in the Second World War by night, and its separate offensive (also flying from RAF Stations in Britain) by the United States Army Air Force between 1942-1945, now the United States Air Force (established on 26 September 1947).

Nor did the general public foresee Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nor did it foresee the Holocaust.

It is now 122 years since the Wright Brothers first flight. Only last week, India successfully landed an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon’s South Pole. Nations are planning manned landings.

I have only to spend a short period leafing through the pages of my aviation books to discover another piece of information that has hitherto evaded me, no matter how many times I read these books.

What will we have achieved by 2123? In spite of the negativity, the doom-watchers, the apocalyptic siren voices, we will still be here. And I have faith in our descendants. I am less patient with Generation Z and Generation Alpha and all the existentiallists that cause havoc and are usually from privileged backgrounds.

LIVERPOOL

Berlin1944Strategic Air Offensive

Kenneth Webb

Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.

He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.

Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.

In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.

https://www.kennwebb.com