Customer Reviews

United States Naval Aviation 1910-1918

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This version of the early history of U.S. Naval Aviation is told in the first 159 pages, consisting of 6 more-or-less independent chapters. Much of the first 2 chapters seems to be loosely strung together from a published USN chronology (which incidentally is now available on-line at the Naval Historical Center site.) In fact, the entire book is basically a dry recapitulation of sometimes unconnected events with no attempt at interpretation and very little comment. There are plenty of photos, a good portion of which were new to me, but many suffer from extremely poor copy technique. (What appears to be the reflection of a copy stand light appears along the edges, "whiting out" detail.)

The narrative is interrupted by several pages of aircraft serial numbers, personnel lists, etc., that might better have been added to the 26 [!] appendices that make up the second half of the book. Nineteen of these are devoted to accounts of U.S. Naval Air Stations in Europe during WWI and, judging from the footnotes, most appear to be almost verbatim reproductions of USN documents (or in one case, contemporary newspaper articles.)

Good editing/proofreading would have removed some irritants. For example, page 47 has USN ace David S. Ingalls as "Ingots" and adds a "d" to F. Trubee and Henry P. Davison's surname. Worse yet, on page 29, NACA chairman Dr. Charles D. Walcott becomes "Walkout". It's impossible, however, to quickly locate references to these gentlemen or anything else-there's no index.

This isn't a bad book, but much of the information is available gratis at the aforementioned web site or in the Government Documents section of any large library.

It has the feel typical of the Shiffer Military History series-solid, nice slick pages, well made overall, but I suspect even hard core naval aviation buffs will have a tough time justifying the cost for what new information they're apt to find between the covers.