The Friendless Sky

By Alexander McKee

In 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. It was to be their first major war since Waterloo. Britain was ready. Or so they thought …

For the first time in history, the British Expeditionary Force set out to cross the Channel under the cover of air support.

With aviation still in its infancy when the war began, the air cover provided was rather primitive. Up above the mud-soaked soldiers who fought over the devastated, trench-scarred landscape that was northern France, a new kind of war was being born; flimsy biplanes and triplanes wheeled and spun, engines roaring, wires screaming and guns chattering.

In the skies above the poppy-fields, men became aces and were cut down in their prime: amongst them, Albert Ball, Jean Navarre, Max Immelmann and Manfred von Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron’. They were the legendary heroes of a whole new age.