First Air Campaign

by Harry O. Lawson, Eric Lawson, Jane Lawson

The skies over Europe during World War I saw a uniquely modern contest for tactical and technological supremacy. Each new strategy or invention by the Allies or Central Powers quickly brought a deadly response from the other. Each innovation was tested in the air by combat pilots who were gambling with their lives. At times with a life expectancy of only 21 flying days, the pilots became the most enduring legend of the War.Eric and Jane Lawson present...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0938289446
• ISBN13: 9780938289449
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 249 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Good beginner for those interested in the subject.

This is an excellent book with a great format. The authors created a chapter for each year of the war and then followed each up with a conclusion and a facts page/biography. Although not as indepth relating to those who flew, it gives an otherwise well encompassing look at WWI aviation. This book is definitely going to spark an interest in anyone who reads it.

Informative and humanizing

This book is a good basic survey of the first campaign of aerial warfare, from the opening days when gentlemen amateur aviators threw bricks at each other to the highly systematized deployments of 1918."The First Air Campaign" combines a substantial discussion of tactics, overall air strategy, and technological innovation with a surprisingly human touch. This last aspect of the book derives in part from several well-placed "capsules," or vignettes separate from the text. This allows sample stories of individuals into the text without interfering with the main discussion's flow. I found a section on women pilots particular interesting and new.Finally, the book's photographic reproductions are superb. Connecting the black-and-white faces of young men whose voices the text recreates either as they rhapsodize about fighting like knights above the clouds or write resignedly of their (usually accurate) premonitions of death puts a power into this book that can't easily be described.