Today we're looking at the three Ps: (defence) policy, prisoners (of war), and (MM.) Pilâtre (and d'Arlandes, the first aeronauts, along with early ballooning more generally). Okay, so I need to work on my intros…
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Three blitzes: the German Blitz on Britain (well, London); the British Blitz on Germany; and the robot Blitz on Britain.
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I think this is a first for this series: three books by past Aviation Cultures presenters!
...continue reading[This review was commissioned by the Michigan War Studies Review back in 2016, but for some reason never got published. As MiWSR is now, sadly, defunct, I guess there's no harm in putting it up here on Airminded.]
James Hamilton-Paterson. Marked for Death: The First War in the Air. New York: Pegasus Books, 2016.
Vanishingly few aviation historians can boast a glowing cover endorsement from the likes of J.G. Ballard. James Hamilton-Paterson can; Ballard loved ‘his elegant and intensely evocative style: strangeness lifts off his pages like a rare perfume’. While Ballard had his own obsessions with aviation, he was presumably not writing of Marked for Death, published eight years after his death, but about Hamilton-Paterson’s earlier, more earthbound output. After a long and successful literary career, Hamilton-Paterson has turned to the history of flight for inspiration: first in Empire of the Clouds, the compelling and critical story of Britain’s attempt to keep to the forefront of aviation in the jet age, then in a fictionalised account of a Vulcan bomber crew at the height of the Cold War, Under the Radar.[1] In Marked for Death he has attempted something more ambitious: a history of ‘The First War in the Air’.
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Group biography, airport architecture, and a campaign history. (If it wasn't obvious by now, I'm selecting these books completely at random!)
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A definite Australian flavour this time, from the Empire Air Training Scheme (as the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan usually isn't known as) to whatever happened after the Empire Air Training Scheme. Plus the book of a certain aviation history blog (remember blogs? Me neither).
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2023 will mark 120 years since the first controlled heavier than air flight, and 240 years since the first more or less controlled lighter than air flight. Much more importantly, it's also the year in which I am going to get my ever-growing stack of to-be-read aviation history books under control! I can't promise that I will only read aviation history books this year, but I will mostly. And in the spirit of accountability (as well as content generation), I'm going to list and reflect on what I read here on Airminded (apart from what I'm reading for strictly research purposes, anyway). Starting now...
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