Knights Without Parachutes — eddie rickenbacker

Adventure in the Air Bigglesworth, popularly known as Biggles, a slight, fair-haired, good-looking lad still in his teens, but an acting Flight Commander, was talking, not of wine or women as novelists would have us believe, but of a new fusee spring for a Vickers gun which would speed it up another hundred rounds a minute. Boys may believe after reading Hardy Boys books that sons of detectives actually bring international criminals to justice during school vacations. Adults realize real adventure stories are few and far between, and hardly ever happen to the same person...except in a very few periods...

The End of Aerial Duels Last week’s post explained how the summer 1917 Gotha attacks on London caused Arthur Gould Lee’s squadron to be in England. Though they didn't get to fight any Gothas, they comforted the population while developing their skills at formation flying. The practice in formation flying was itself the beginning of a major change. The period that WWI aviation is best remembered for was the aerial fighting in 1916 and 1917: “when enemies in the air could fight without mercy but without hate, could even respect and admire each other’s skill and valour.” But when, on the formation of...

The Supply Chain Behind Fighter Pilots One of our readers - thank you! - sent us a very interesting article on what airpower did to the conduct of war. (Moved it into the third dimension, for one thing.) While many of the war's fascinating stories are from the fighter pilots, there was (and is!) much more to air power than that, and the numbers tell their own amazing stories. The fighter pilots were actually in a perfect position to see the importance of maintenance, logistics, and supply. Modern Warfare, Aviation, and Supply Interesting points from the article (The Genesis of Modern Warfare:...

Did US Entry Help the Air War? Did the Air War Help US Entry? On April 6, 1917, the US entered the war. What effect did the air war have on US entry, and what effect did US entry have on the air war? We talked to Andy Parks about these questions, who pointed to the experience of his own extended family. Many whose views had started out isolationist were pushed toward patriotism and the war effort as German submarine warfare and the Zimmerman telegram made Germany feel like a real threat, even from across the Atlantic. Andy's grandfather Charles Parks...