Aces falling : war above the trenches, 1918
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"By 1918 the great First World War 'aces' had become the stuff of legend, and names like Manfred von Richthofen, James McCudden and Edward Mannock were powerful symbols to the warring nations. To their contemporaries these men seemed invincible. Their tactical genius, aerobatic flying skills and deadly gunnery had left a trail of burning aircraft in the skies above France." "But the very nature of war was changing. In a desperate measure to counter the vast ground offensives of that spring, scouts were sent on strafing missions, skimming just feet above the roads and trenches where they were vulnerable to ground fire. The size of the formations began to grow on both sides, and sheer numbers of aircraft began to outweigh individual skills in combat. Increasingly the air war was being fought through bombing raids, conducted by day and night, where all the hard-won specialist skills of the scouts were barely relevant." "As the war changed around them the aces were pushed to their physical and mental limits. The effects of constant high altitude flying without oxygen in open cockpits slowly eroded their health. Increasingly they were tortured by inner fears that they might share the fate of the men they had killed, and as the year wore on the aces began to fall, one by one." "In this book Peter Hart tells the whole tragic story of the air war in 1918. Using the voices of the men themselves, he describes exactly what it was like to fight and die in the skies over the Western Front. At the same time he relates the air war to the fighting on the ground, and shows how developments in bombing and strafing not only brought a new dimension to the Great War, but also pointed the way to the wars of the future."--Jacket.