Musical Airs

Songs inspired by the early age of flight.

  • By Rebecca Maksel
  • AirSpaceMag.com, February 19, 2009
| 7 of 15 |

Smithsonian Institution Libraries


Flaming dirigibles—and burning men—adorn the cover of “Battle in the Sky” which, in spite of the depicted carnage, is actually a lively ragtime*. Canadian Reginald Warneford was the first to shoot down a Zeppelin on June 9, 1915. Hovering above the airship he released six bombs; five missed, but the sixth hit the mark, causing an explosion so great that it flipped Warneford over in his monoplane. The Germans launched 20 airship raids in 1915, killing some 180 people and injuring more than 450. The illustration accompanying “Battle in the Sky” brings to mind H.G. Wells’ 1908 book War in the Air: “Quiet people go out in the morning and see airfleets passing overhead—dripping death—dripping death.”*The MIDI file of "Battle in the Sky" is used with the permission of Benjamin Robert Tubb (brtubb@pdmusic.org) from his site at Public Domain Music (www.pdmusic.org).


| 7 of 15 |



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Comments (2)

I believe that, from the final sentence of this snippet from the song, you can interpret that the song's lyricist intended the title to be a shortening of something like, "My bomber and I fly high in the sky." Other than that, I'm a long time fan of this site. Keep up the great work!

Posted by Mike Burkholder on February 25,2009 | 01:27 AM

I'm not sure how my submitted comment of 2/25/09 lost its first lines but, in them, I disagreed with the author of this article. "My bomber and me" would be the grammatically incorrect form. If one were to use a pronoun rather than "My bomber and I" that pronoun would be "we" as in "We fly high in the sky." In the same vein, "My bomber and me" would need to be replaced with "us" which would result in the grammatically incorrect "Us fly high in the sky." Although it is the more colloquially popular, "X and me" followed by a verb is still grammatically incorrect. I stand with Jay Garside and his lyrics. I hope that this comment does not make me appear to be a grammar goon because I don't normally point out bad grammar but, when I see correct grammar being identified as being wrong, I feel compelled to respond. Thanks for your great website!

Posted by Mike Burkholder on February 28,2009 | 01:11 PM

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