Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918 (Paperback)
Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918 (Paperback)
Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918 (Paperback) Reviews
Peter Hart’s latest book chronicles the the battles fought in the air and on the ground during the Great War’s final year. Like his previous efforts – SOMME SUCCESS and BLOODY APRIL – Hart recreates those long ago times chiefly through using first-person narratives from the Imperial War Museum’s Sound Archive of oral histories supplemented by other documentation. The results is a fascinating, almost ‘in-the-cockpit’ view of Great War air warfare.
1918 witnessed more air combat than all previous years combined. Then too the nature of those combats was changing, air units being increasingly utilized in direct support of Allied and German offensives. The days of the ‘lone wolf’ ace were gone. In 1918 formations controlled by combat-experienced leaders such as ‘Mick’ Mannock engaged equally large German formations while below other squadrons strafed and bombed enemy trenches, flew ceaseless photo recce missions and conducted long-range bombing ops far behind enemy lines. Many aces fell during the final year, their skills dulled by combat fatigue brought on by the relentless combat that symbolized World War I warfare.
ACES FALLING duplicates the format Hart used with such success in SOMME SUCCESS: an overview of the subject punctuated by numerous first-hand aircrew narratives. Yet I did not enjoy reading ACES FALLING as much as I did SOMME SUCCESS. Truth be told, I would have given it 4 1/2 stars if that was possible.
ACES FALLING provides much greater background information on its subject than SOMME SUCCESS. That 2001 volume ran to 224 pages; ACES FALLING maxs out at 386 pages! SOMME SUCCESS was one of the best written aviation history books I’ve come across; a tightly-written, lean and mean chronicle of air warfare. By contrast, ACES FALLING spends a lot of verbage explaining German and Allied strategies and war aims, blow-by-blow accounts of the various 1918 offensives, etc. It’s a tremendous work of scholarship but also, I felt, a bit ponderous. Then too SOMME SUCCESS placed illustrations of aircrew, aircraft, etc. on the pages describing them rather than in a separate insert as with ACES FALLING. Perhaps that is a minor point but I felt it gave a more personal edge to the aircrew narratives.
In any case, ACES FALLING will certainly stand as a first-class account of WWI’s last year. A monumental work of research, Hart’s book will stand as both a tribute to those long-ago airmen and an insightful chronicle of the changing nature of air and land warfare. Highly recommended.
Leave a Reply