Air War Flanders - 1918

Another non-fiction, but not an Osprey one. By Robert Jackson. Very interesting, very well written. Lot of pictures, which was interesting to see the sort of thing they were flying around in. One really surprised me, it showed this absolutely massive biplane, I'm not kidding you could've stood one and a half people in the gap between the two wings and laid out three or four in a row on each wing. Enourmous!

It detailed all the various aspects of the war in the air, including the bombing raids. Some links to how it developed into WWII, but not too many which was nice. I was amazed when I saw it in the library, since it's almost impossible to find books that deal solely with WWI aircraft and pilots. Very interesting indeed. Well written, lots of interesting details about the pilots and the battles that took place, without coming across as dull and boring and repetitious.

Something I did notice was that while there seemed to be more pictures of German aircraft, there was less about the German effort in general, although the French and Americans did get mention. There was stuff about Manfred von Richtofen of course, but it was interesting to see how many people did score very highly along with him. I'm not saying there was nothing about the German side of things, but there was certainly less. Still, a very interesting book. I think you could find it interesting even if you know nothing about the subject to start with. Not quite as story-like as some history books I've read, it gave some info about tactics and so on as well as just telling the details of various dogfights, but still incredibly fascinating. Having said that, I'm a bit of an aeroplane geek and especially interested in the WWI ones... Still, very pleased I found it.

Only one thing annoyed me, and it was hardly the book's fault. There was a page missing! Really irritating, it looked like it would've been quite an interesting page too. Looks a bit like someone actually cut the page out. How can you do that to a book?! Especially a library book. Be nice to books! They're nice to you.