Condition is good very good would be very good however the jacket is faded and tatty around the edges.
ABOUT PIONEER AIR COMBAT
by Captain W. E.Johns
CAFTAIN JAMES BIGGLESWORTH Ä°sa fictitious character, yet he
could have been found in any R.F.C. mess during those great
days of 1g17 and 1918 when air combat had become the order of
the day and air duelling was a fine art.
To readers who are unfamiliar with the conditions that
prevailed in the sky of France during the last two years of World
War I, it may seem unlikely that so many adventures could have
fallen to the lot ofone man. In these eventful years, every day
and I might almost say every hour--brought adventure, tragic
or humorous, to the man in the air, and as we sat in our cockpits
warming up our engines for the dawn 'show', no one could say
what the end of the day would bring, or whether he would be
alive to see it.
Again, it may seem improbable that any one man could have
been involved in so many hazardous undertakings, and yet
survive. That may be true; sooner or later mnost war pilots met
the inevitable fate of the flying fighter. I sometimes wonder how
any of us survived, yet there were some who seemed to bear a
charmed life. William Bishop, the British ace, Rene Fonck, the
French ace and prince of air duellists, and, on the other side,
Ernest Udet, and many others, fought hundreds of battles in the
air and survived thousands of hours of deadly peril. Every day
incredible deeds of heroism were performed by pilots whose
names are unknoWn.
Nowhere are the curious whims of Lady Luck so apparent as
in the air. Lothar von Richthofen, brother of the famous ace,
shot down forty British machines and was killed in a simple
cros-country flight. Nungesser, the French champion of orty-
five air battles, was drowned, and McKeever, Canadian ace of
thirty victories, was killed in a skidding motor-car. Captain
Jock' McKay, of my squadron survived three years' air warfare
only to be killed by "archie' an hour before the Armistice was