The airplane at the centre of the story
A part of this largely forgotten flying machine lives on in every commercial flight we take today
The airplane is a ghost. It is both everywhere and nowhere. It is untouchable and unreachable, yet it casts its shadow every time we fly.
The airplane is an agent of destruction. It was built to carry and drop bombs on German targets.
The airplane is one of the largest in the world in 1918. It is called the Handley Page O/400. It is like a giant version of the more familiar-looking biplanes of the age. It carries a crew of three or more.
The airplane is rudimentary looking. Videos of it taking off and flying are alarming to watch. They show how fragile and tenuous the experience must have been.
The airplane and I have a personal connection. My great-grandfather, JBR, flew in one (more to come on that). For that reason, I want to see one. I want to touch it, or at least stand beside it.
The airplane refuses to allow this. Not a single example of the O/400 survives, not even in a museum.
The airplane resists all attempts to recreate it. A group of enthusiasts in England spent years trying to build a replica. Although they had stacks of original blueprints and their own engineering expertise, building an airworthy O/400 proved too expensive and too technically challenging.
The airplane seems determined to remain extinct.
The airplane’s existence feels impossibly long ago. I watch movies made in the 1960s, before I was born, and try to imagine that world. But that is not the world of the O/400. Then I imagine the Second World War. But that is not the world of the O/400. Then I imagine the Great Depression of the 1930s, when my grandparents grew up. But it is not that world either.
The airplane is from a time when aviation itself was only just over a decade old. No more than a tiny sliver of humanity could say they had flown in a plane.
The airplane is not the most famous of First World War aircraft. Single-seater fighter planes grab most of the attention. But hundreds of O/400s were built and used near the end of the war.
The airplane was part of the strategic bombing campaign. Britain and its allies thought that if they bombed Germany from the air relentlessly for months on end, it would help give them the advantage.
The airplane raises difficult questions about the legitimacy of civilians as targets. Bombing missions were mostly about destroying military and industrial infrastructure. But houses were hit too. Sometimes that was unintentional, sometimes it was on purpose. Was it acceptable to bomb German homes and the people inside? Was it ok to target town centres that had no specific military value?
The airplane has always roused feelings of affection for it. This is understandable. Men flew in this machine and did extraordinary things. They used this machine to prosecute the war effort, and to help win it.
The airplane, however, is also not an object of affection. It brought misery and death to many people. Such is the nature of war. Its role was unpleasant, also useful, even necessary. Still, I am conflicted when I look at the airplane with fondness, as I do.
The airplane’s nickname, The Bloody Paralyser, is uncomfortable for me.
The airplane proved that long-range bombing from the air was possible. It offered an advantage over the enemy that could not be achieved other ways. After the war, bombers became a crucial element in conflicts of the 20th century and beyond.
The airplane changed how we live our lives. Shortly after the war, some O/400s were converted into passenger-carrying aircraft. They were among the first to run international civilian air services. On August 25, 1919, a retrofitted O/400 carried a group of journalists from London to Paris in what we would now recognize as a commercial flight.1
The airplane led to the global civil aviation industry. British Airways says its origins can be traced back to that August day in 1919.
A smaller two-seater airplane with pilot and one passenger also made an inaugural trip between the two cities that day