Talk:W. E. Johns

Untitled
I'd be interested to learn the value of Johns' estate at his death, if anyone knows it. Mark O'Sullivan 08:37, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 19:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Mars books
I remember reading two books by Johns about an expedition to Mars. No idea what they were called, but there should be something about them in the article. Or at least a bibliography. -- Zsero (talk) 00:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is mentioned already in the penultimate paragraph. Feel free to expand on this. I think one of them was called Kings of Space. PatGallacher (talk) 11:30, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A bit of searching brings up this link which lists books
 * Kings of Space
 * Return to Mars
 * Now to the Stars
 * To Outer Space
 * The Edge of Beyond
 * I remember reading some of them (a very long time ago) from the teenagers'/young adults section of a local library. A local library may still be a good place to find some of them, at least if you're in a country where you can expect to find British culture in the local library (Britain, some Commonwealth countries).  I think they went much further than Mars, to planets round other stars.  I can only remember little bits of two stories, one where all the vegetation on the planet was fatally dangerous, as someone found out by walking through it, and one where an alien spacecraft dropped what seemed like harmless little white puffballs which expanded and sterilised the planet.  Philh-591 (talk) 20:48, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Wife's birth date
When was Maude Hunt born? The article says she was born in 1888 but then says she was 11 years older than Johns, who was born in 1893. 1893-1888=5. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eeksypeeksy (talk • contribs) 06:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Expedition to Mars
I seem to recall a whole series of space novels by W E Johns including the expedition to Mars. These involved a saucer (?) shaped space craft called "The Spacemaster" and the usual professor who had designed and built the Spacemaster.

If my memory is correct the expedition to Mars was the last in the series.AT Kunene (talk) 10:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

"Retaining rank"
To explain a recent edit of mine: on leaving British (or Australian) service, one normally only "retains" one's final rank (as a salutation anyway) if one has attained the rank of Major (Squadron Leader in the RAF) or higher, although former army Captains sometimes use "Captain" this is strictly wrong (confusion with the much higher Naval rank of Captain??). Thus Johns most definitely never achieved a rank in the RFC or RAF that he could have "retained" as part of his real name. Even "Captain" would have been questionable - whether or not he ever held that rank or its equivalent. (A pen name is of course a totally different matter - in a pen name one can obviously call one's self whatever one likes!) --Soundofmusicals (talk) 19:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Posthumous published Biggles books
Johns died in 1968 while still writing Biggles Does Some Homework. In 1968, two Biggles books were published, two in 1969, and one in 1970. So depending on the months the 1968 books were published, at least 3 and at most 5 books appeared posthumously, except if these stories were serialized during Johns's lifetime. Does anyone know? It strikes me as unlikely, though not impossible, that a writer would have so many stories in the pipeline at the time of his death.MackyBeth (talk) 21:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Most of the Biggles "short stories" (as opposed to the "long stories" and "novels") were originally written for magazines - at first for Popular Flying and later for others. When the stories first appeared in book form they were "selected" from the original magazines, but some stories simply never made it into a book. The "posthumous" books are simply collections consisting of (or including) stories in this category. If you can find a source for this (not me, I'm afraid) it might even be worth working into the article. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Your description seems to fit number 98 (1999) in the list of Biggles books listed in the Biggles article. But look at the titles of numbers 93-96: they look like one adventure per book, not short story collections. So it looks Johns's writing was two or three books ahead of his publishing schedule.MackyBeth (talk) 00:24, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Had another look at the late novels, and you're right of course. It does look as if Johns may have been pumping the books out faster than his publisher thought that they should be released, for commercial reasons. He may well have taken the odd rest, too, and got ahead of himself on purpose, to allow for a "new" Biggles book to come out at regular intervals, in spite of his patchy health (as someone "that age" myself I can relate to that). Have we got a source for this? otherwise it would be speculation, of course. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Nominated W.E. Johns as vital article
The Wikipedia project to identify 10,000 topics so important that the articles should be good does include writers as Enid Blyton and Astrid Lindgren. So I figured W.E. Johns should be nominated to join that list as well. See the nomination process here: Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Expanded

Any editor can vote.MackyBeth (talk) 15:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The nomination failed, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Expanded/Archive 34. --83.255.55.91 (talk) 08:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

My last load of tweaks
1. We cover the point of Johns' "real life" rank as opposed to his "pen name" one at the appropriate place in the article - I don't honestly think this is such a major point that we need to encumber such a succinct lead with the fact.

2. The Yeomanry were cavalry - and so Johns was strictly speaking a "trooper" rather than a "private". Several cavalry regiments fought at Gallipoli, (including the Australian Light Horse) but all "dismounted" (i.e. fighting as infantry). A detail, but worth getting right.

3. A recent well-meant edit notwithstanding, we've already mentioned Biggles, and he gets a fair old write up in the next paragraph - no need for any further description of just who we are talking about. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 02:38, 25 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Must disagree sharply with two of these. Biggles' full name is not mentioned anywhere in the article, which reads oddly without it. (But at least my edit was called 'well-meant'. Love getting those brownie-points.) And Johns' bogus rank ought to be highlighted in the lede, purely as a factual corrective. Valetude (talk) 11:22, 25 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I sometimes come across as bit of a patronising old git - if that is the case here, then such was not my intent. I have to revert so much vandalism that to mildly disagree with someone who gives the impression of trying to do the right thing is like a holiday. You probably know the feeling. But no, while some people seem to get very hot under the collar about this unmilitary upstart using the lowly army rank of "Captain" as a civilian-life salutation, when he never got past the rank of lieutenant anyway? I think that one reiteration of the detail that his pen name was not one he was entitled to have in private life (woopy doo!) is a very petty matter to get plugged twice over, especially in a short lead. We don't mention his desertion of his invalid wife (a much more serious fault in most people's books?) more than once, so why this? You can have a mention of "his" full name if you must - but at an appropriate juncture (logically - the very first time he is mentioned). --Soundofmusicals (talk) 13:47, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Pen name
Was "Captain W. E. Johns" a pen name? (Sorry if this seems silly but someone questioned it). Since, as we discussed on a couple of old threads above, he was certainly never entitled to style himself, or be addressed as, "Captain": so it was not his "real" name. He was of course an RFC/RAF veteran, and entitled to be taken more seriously, we might well suppose, at least in the context of the WWI Biggles books, than a mere civilian - in fact that is probably why he (or perhaps his publisher) prefixed the name printed on the title page of his books with the (spurious) rank. Quite legit for a pen name of course - otherwise highly improper, at best! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 22:19, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * It is of course illegal to "impersonate an officer" and for that matter highly improper, at least, for a currently or formerly serving officer to claim a rank he or she has never held (albeit one would probably not be prosecuted unless one did so for fraudulent reasons). In any case W.E.Johns did no such thing - and it is quite improper for us to accuse him of anything of the kind - the "Capt." bit is purely part of his pen name, in which context he had every right to call himself a Marshal of the Royal Air Force if he so desired. This is actually quite important, and cannot be let slide - sorry. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:33, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Average what?
He performed six weeks of active duty as a bomber pilot with No. 55 Squadron RAF, close to the average in the latter part of the war.
 * Do you mean average survival rate, before being killed or captured? Or did they not order you to fly for more than six weeks, as with the tour-limit in WW2? Valetude (talk) 15:45, 5 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Average survival rate before being killed, wounded or becoming a POW. RAF "strategic" bombing missions in late 1918 were very dangerous indeed - as one source puts it "the Germans defended their industrial areas with skill". More to the point, do we need to reword this to make it clearer, do you think? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:52, 6 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Done it. Thanks for your information, Soundofmusicals. Valetude (talk) 16:04, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Johns' (not particularly distinguished) military career
Long range bombing raids into Germany were dangerous (and by all accounts somewhat futile, at least in a military sense) so it is hardly surprising johns didn't last long at the job - on the other hand without precise statistics it's not very encyclopedic to state that it was "average". Rewording gives specific background and makes (defensible) relevant statement. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 06:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)