They Fought for the Sky

In four short years, man developed to terrible perfection the ability to kill and destroy in the lonely battlefield of the sky. In 1913, flying machines were little more than toys and the men who built them and who flew them were regarded, at best, as amiable eccentrics; by 1918, however, the lightly regarded airplane had become a potent war machine, and the men who flew were international heroes.
This great, and most important, war-adventure story is told here dramatically and with powerful immediacy by one of our best war reporters. It is the story of the birth of air power, but more, it is the story of "those gallant young men of a luckless generation, most of whom flew to glorious martyrdom." The names of the great aces are still remembered today: Rickenbacker, Billy Bishop, Richthofen, Billy Mitchell, Fokker, Guynemer, Lufbery and scores of others. Their personal stories are all here.
Mr. Reynolds has also included the technical developments of World War I, the great Zeppelin raids on London, the Lafayette Escadrille and, most exciting of all, the hundreds of dogfights over No Man's Land, which, strangely enough, unexpectedly brought about the return of the ancient concept of the duel to warfare along with a code of chivalry obsolete for centuries. The twenty-four pages of rare photographs, many from the Imperial War Museum, London, greatly add to the text.
One of America's World War I aces, Elliott Springs, has written of this book: "All lovers of aviation lore owe Quent' a great debt. He has made the history of military aviation fascinating reading. He has written a romance of the air - a sort of celestial relay race."
The jacket painting, by famed aviation artist John T. McCoy, Jr., portrays a dogfight between a Sopwith Camel and a Fokker Triplane.

by Quentin Reynolds
Published by Rinehart (USA) 1957 1st edition 104pp illustrated index bibliography 15x22 inscription on title page, d/j very slightly rubbed, otherwise near fine.

The inscription is signed by Christy Magrath , well known aircraft model builder. When constructing a diorama of the Wright Brothers first successful aeroplane flight, he travelled to the original site at Kitty Hawk and collected sand to be included in the model scene which is displayed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum at Washington D.C., U.S.A.






Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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