No Empty Chairs The Short and Heroic Lives of the Young Aviators Who Fought and Died in the First World War

by Mackersey, Ian

• ISBN13: 9780297859949
• ISBN10: 0297859943
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-07
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Summary

In the spring of 1917, when the world's first great air war was at its height, the British squadrons were losing 200 pilots a month, and British pilot life expectancy was eleven days.The aeroplanes the pilots flew were rudimentary open-cockpit biplanes, with a single machine bolted to the wood and fabric wing intended for shooting down the equally frail German planes.This book tells the story of that first great air war, illustrating its devastating emotional impact on the participants and their families in a narrative enriched by the private correspondence that flowed between them, and diaries, reports and interviews. The aerial combat tactics that the sacrifices of those First World War aviators created became so tactically effective that they were used to deadly effect in the Second World War.

Author Biography

Ian Mackersey is a writer and documentary filmmaker specializing in aviation biography. He began his career as a writer for the Dominion and later the New Zealand Herald, and lived in Britain and Zambia before returning to New Zealand.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Prologue	p. 1
The Reluctant Inventors	p. 7
The Aeroplane Goes to War	p. 17
Enter 'Boom'	p. 28
Brave Lives Given for Others	p. 38
The Fokker Scourge	p. 47
Public Schoolboys Wanted	p. 58
The Instructors Who Stuttered	p. 67
Unhappiness in Parliament	p. 79
Giants Dripping Death	p. 86
Zeppelin Stalkers	p. 98
The 'Fees' Come to France	p. 104
Terror Above the Somme	p. 108
Morale and the Offensive Spirit	p. 114
Bloody April	p. 127
Going 'Mad Dog'	p. 141
An Airman's Wife	p. 156
The Mothers	p. 164
The 'Bloody Wonderful Drunks'	p. 181
They Also Served	p. 190
The Majors	p. 204
The Raid That Never Was	p. 209
Gothas	p. 223
America Comes to London	p. 236
Operation Michael	p. 242
Death of the Red Baron	p. 249
The Spent Capital of Courage	p. 260
The Working-Class Heroes	p. 270
Flamerinoes	p. 280
Waning of the Spirit	p. 293
The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day	p. 309
Silence of a Desolate Land	p. 320
Epilogue	p. 327
Acknowledgements	p. 336
Select Bibliography	p. 342
Source Notes	p. 348
Index	p. 364
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