From the outset, our understanding of aviation in World War I has been tangled in myth and legend. The airplane was not a decisive weapon in the conflict, yet virtually every hero to emerge from the war was involved with aviation. After three-quarters of a century, the image of gallant knights of the air, locked in single combat high above the trenches, still captures the imagination. Legend, Memory and the Great War in the Air, published to document a new permanent gallery of the same name at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, contrasts the romantic myth of gallant combat in the sky with the grim reality faced by the aviators who fought and died during the war. It provides an accurate picture of aviation's role in the war and examines the interplay between perception and reality in history. From the earliest battles to the final offensive of 1918, military leaders tried to integrate the airplane into their strategy to win the ground war. After aircraft had proved successful as observation platforms at the battles of the Marne and Tannenberg in 1914, the combatants continued to use them to reconnoiter enemy positions before launching attacks, to direct artillery fire, and to attack enemy troops. Aircraft were also used to bomb metropolitan areas in an attempt to destroy public morale. But despite its widespread application, air power was often misused and its effects were inconclusive. Nevertheless, government ministries and the press singled out fighter pilots, the most visible representatives of the air war, as marketable heroes. By the end of World War I, the aces (fighter pilots who had shot down substantial numbers of enemy aircraft) had become celebrities, even though their aerial triumphs had little noticeable effect on the course of the ground war. World War I changed the nature of warfare and the world's social and political order. In the years immediately after the war, policy planners and decision makers made the war's modest degree of aerial activity the dominant topic of postwar analysis, overemphasizing and distorting its nature and influence. Today, three generations later, we still live with the consequences and the myths of the Great War in the Air. Legend, Memory and the Great War in the Air examines the reality of the first war in the air with a wide variety of artifacts and images. It explores the workings of history and challenges the reader to reevaluate unquestioned beliefs. It not only furnishes a much-needed, accurate picture of events in World War I, but by juxtaposing the myth and reality, and examining their relationship, gives a sense of the historical process as well.

Legend, Memory, and the Great War in the Air

History

Dietz, Thomas J.

Pisano, Dominick A.

Military

Univ of Washington Pr

From the outset, our understanding of aviation in World War I has been tangled in myth and legend. The airplane was not a decisive weapon in the conflict, yet virtually every hero to emerge from the war was involved with aviation. After three-quarters of a century, the image of gallant knights of the air, locked in single combat high above the trenches, still captures the imagination. Legend, Memory and the Great War in the Air, published to document a new permanent gallery of the same name at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, contrasts the romantic myth of gallant combat in the sky with the grim reality faced by the aviators who fought and died during the war. It provides an accurate picture of aviation's role in the war and examines the interplay between perception and reality in history. From the earliest battles to the final offensive of 1918, military leaders tried to integrate the airplane into their strategy to win the ground war. After aircraft had proved successful as observation platforms at the battles of the Marne and Tannenberg in 1914, the combatants continued to use them to reconnoiter enemy positions before launching attacks, to direct artillery fire, and to attack enemy troops. Aircraft were also used to bomb metropolitan areas in an attempt to destroy public morale. But despite its widespread application, air power was often misused and its effects were inconclusive. Nevertheless, government ministries and the press singled out fighter pilots, the most visible representatives of the air war, as marketable heroes. By the end of World War I, the aces (fighter pilots who had shot down substantial numbers of enemy aircraft) had becomecelebrities, even though their aerial triumphs had little noticeable effect on the course of the ground war. World War I changed the nature of warfare and the world's social and political order. In the years immediately after the war, policy planners and decision makers made the war's

Each year, millions of visitors flock to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to look at the Bell X-1 aircraft-the vehicle in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. This in-depth look at the legendary aircraft tells the story of this momentous achievement-how the technology was developed, conflicts were resolved, and Yeager and his fellow pilots became the heroic figures depicted in The Right Stuff. A wealth of historical photographs of the Bell X-1 enriches the text, which includes such fascinating material as Yeager's official memo about the historic flight. This is as close as readers will ever get to being inside the aircraft that paved the way for supersonic flight, thus ushering in the era of space exploration.

Chuck Yeager and the Bell X-1: Breaking the Sound Barrier

Biographies & Memoirs

Winter, Frank H.

Van Der Linden, F. Robert

Historical

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

American Airport Designs

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening & Landscape Design

Aia Pr

Launched in 1939, the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) was one of the largest government-sponsored vocational education programs of its time. In To Fill the Skies with Pilots, Dominick A. Pisano explores the successes and failures of the program, from its conception as a hybrid civilian-military mandate in peacetime, through the war years, and into the immediate postwar period. As originally conceived, the CPTP would serve both war-preparedness goals and New Deal economic ends. Using the facilities of colleges, universities, and commercial flying schools, the CPTP was designed to provide a pool of civilian pilots for military service in the event of war. The program also sought to give an economic boost to the light-plane industry and the network of small airports and support services associated with civilian aviation. As Pisano demonstrates, the CPTP's multiple objectives ultimately contributed to its demise. Although the program did train tens of thousands of pilots who later flew during the war (mostly in noncombat missions), military leaders faulted the project for not being more in line with specific recruitment and training needs. After attempting to adjust to these needs, the CPTP then faced a difficult and ultimately unsuccessful transition back to civilian purposes in the postwar era. By charting the history of the CPTP, Pisano sheds new light on the politics of aviation during these pivotal years as well as on civil-military relations and New Deal policy making.

To Fill the Skies with Pilots: The Civilian Pilot Training Program, 1939-1946 (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series)

Americas

Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

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