On a Wing and a Prayer

{detailed description}The men who joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1914 were the original heroes of flying, treading into unknown territory and paving the way for later aerial combat. They became icons for the soldiers in the trenches, and a stark contrast to the thousands on the ground fighting faceless thousands as men fought aircraft to aircraft and man to man. For the first time the air became a battlefield of its own - by 1918, hastened by the terrible war, aircraft were understood to be the future of modern warfare.
Joshua Levine has uncovered a wealth of previously unknown stories told by these men, covering the perils of those early days, the thrills of learning to fly, and the horrors of war in the air at a time when pilots carried little defensive armament and no parachutes. 2008 is ninety years since the birth of the Royal Air Force, and the text is a fitting tribute to mark that anniversary.
Barely trained pilots, arriving at new squadrons, were lucky to survive several weeks. Joshua's text draws on the first-hand accounts of those who did. The gripping, moving, and poignant personal narratives, both British and German, reveal the feelings of the men who defended the trenches from above and witnessed the war from a completely different perspective. They tell their story, in their own words, for the first time.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Joshua Levine
published by Collins 2008 1st edn. 371pp illustrated, index 17x24
{condition}near fine inc. d/j
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