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| Sample Illustrations from the Series |
By Carl J. Bobrow
Aeronaut Books, 2025
Reviewed by Steve Suddaby
As a lover of WWI aviation, I was initially concerned that I wouldn’t find prewar aviation histories very interesting. I had no reason to worry! Carl Bobrow, Alfred Verville Fellow and retired Smithsonian Institution National Air & Space Museum staffer, presents fascinating descriptions of the earliest years of aviation in the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German Empires. Each volume helps the reader understand the genesis of these empires’ successes and failures in aviation during the war itself. The Russian and Austro-Hungarian histories are particularly enlightening because those two empires have always been underrepresented in English-language research on the Great War.
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| Aerial Ascendancy: Volume I Russia’s Path to the Skies |
Carl Bobrow’s writing style greatly enhances the reader’s understanding of these technical and complex topics. He writes short chapters. His photo captions are long and detailed. The end notes are given chapter-by-chapter, where they’re easy to find and often provide insightful background in addition to just citing sources. His electronic enhancement of the photos and their large size make them unusually clear and sharp, as if they were black-and-white photos taken in 2012 rather than 1912.
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| Aerial Ascendancy: Volume II The Rise of Flight in Austria-Hungary |
Bobrow’s approach to “military” history is more wide-ranging than that of most authors. He discusses civilian pilots (including women), mechanics, aviation manufacturing companies, international air meets, promotion of aviation by aristocrats and industrialists, government policies that affected aviation companies, academic research into flight, aerial photography, naval aviation, the sparring between advocates of airplanes and airships, as well as the prescience and shortsightedness of particular generals and admirals. All of this gives an exceptionally well rounded appraisal of aviation in these three empires and clarifies why their subsequent military aviation efforts succeeded or struggled. These three volumes will be an important resource for understanding World War I aviation for years to come.
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| Aerial Ascendancy: Volume III Genesis of German Aviation |
All volumes available from Amazon HERE
Full Disclosure: The WWI aviation community is small and tightly knit. Carl Bobrow has been a friend and colleague of this reviewer for years.
Steve Suddaby
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