GREAT BRITAIN: Eastland v. Westland

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Next day, while the nation mourned four crashes and the death of nine aviators, the Air Ministry announced that from the air the 700 square miles of metropolitan London had "looked like a few small scattered villages." Eastland aviators, it was said, were unable to see bombing objectives which by their reckonings were directly beneath them. From this optimistic opinion individual pilots and independent observers sharply dissented. They declared that the lights of cars, the glare of blast furnaces, lanterns on bridges and Thames barges, the blaze of signals in switchyards, and the lights of trains made the blackout a complete failure. Major Edwin Colston Shepherd, editor-elect of The Aeroplane, an interested passenger in an Eastland bomber, reported that his plane twice flew directly to its objectives, eluding searchlights and four times passing unseen near defending fighters. "The experience," he concluded, "of these early hours seems too ominous to be true." The answer will probably be to make blackouts compulsory. But even on a dark night nothing can hide the sheen of the Thames, winding into London's heart.