A Detailed Look
The Encyclopedia of 20th Century Conflict: Air Warfare
Peter G. Cooksley
London: Arms & Armour Press
1997, 287 pages, $34.95
Reviewed by Sid
Perkins
Special to The Stars and Stripes
Warfare is as old as Man himself: As long as there have been people to fight, there have been things to fight about. But air warfare took place only in man's imagination until he could devise a way to lift himself from the surface of the Earth. Even those interested in flight for the purest of purposes could see the obvious benefits of waging war from the air.
In 1670, Francesco de Lana-Terzi, a Jesuit priest, designed an ingenious anti-ship "flying boat."
Although de Lana-Terzi correctly foresaw aerial bombardment, however, he evidently failed to predict anti-aircraft guns and missiles.
Just over 100 years later, the advent of the hot air balloon placed air warfare within Man's grasp. But aside from the use of such balloons for reconnaissance and for a few scattered bombing attacks, air warfare is confined to the 20th century - well within the lifetimes of many people alive today.
The Encyclopedia of 20th Century Conflict: Air Warfare (a companion volume to the "Land" and "Sea" entries in the same series) is an easy-to-use reference book that provides a detailed look at the aeronautical milestones of this century.
The book's first section is a 44-page chronology of major aeronautical accomplishments, from the British Cavalry's use of a balloon in South Africa in March 1900 up through the deployment of Russian helicopter gunships in Chechnya in March 1996. De Lana-Terzi's prophetic vision of the aerial bombing of ships came to pass on April 25, 1917, when floatplanes of the British Royal Naval Air Service sank a German destroyer off Ostend, Belgium.
The chronology is especially detailed during the early years of the century, when aeronautical developments came one upon another, as well as WWI, WWI, and the Vietnam War. Substantial data also is provided for the Persian Gulf War and more recent operations such as those in the Iraqi No-Fly Zone and Operation Deny Flight over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The second major section of the book, 192 pages in length, is comprised of encyclopedia-style entries. Of special interest are comprehensive lists of pilots who became "aces" (French and American pilots had to shoot down five enemy aircraft to become an ace, while Germany and Austria required that their pilots down 10) and an entry that includes the code names of significant military operations. This section also contains extended entries for important aeronautical developments such as flying bombs, radar, parasite aircraft and in-flight refueling.
The book's third section, 34 pages, contains more than 60 entries about notable aviation personalities and includes thumbnail biographies of everyone from America's General Henry "Hap" Arnold to Germany's Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Almost everyone, that is: One of this section's glaring omissions is its failure to include the Wright Brothers (either Orville or Wilbur).
The book is liberally peppered with almost 200 photographs, as well as maps showing the targets of significant air campaigns and the locations of air bases during major conflicts such as World War II and the Korean War.
This review appeared on page 12
of the Jan. 5,
1998, edition of The Stars and Stripes.
Copyright 1998 by The National Tribune Corporation.
All rights reserved.