1914, and the war in the skies is just beginning.
At first the flying machine was hardly taken seriously; it was an odd, accident-prone diversion for the rich and the obsessed. But when the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) set off for France in 1914, every facet of air-warfare was about to be discovered anew.
Four years later and the pace of development led to the complete evolution of aviation: from fighters to bombers, from ground attack to reconnaissance, from the inevitably disastrous to the epitome of engineering successes.
The First Great Air War is the full, fascinating account of how a handful of Airmen and engineers, with a love of flying and adventure, went to war and transcended the boundaries of technological possibility.