(1888PressRelease)
February 22, 2008 - CRESTVIEW, FL: Ever wish you could see a World War I Curtiss “Jenny” do a triple loop? How about a squadron of American-made DH-4 “Liberty” bombers taking off on a mission over the front? You can, in glorious black-and-white—shot on location by the military's own movie makers, using state of the art (1918-style) cumbersome wooden boxes with crude brass-encased glass lenses, metal hand cranks, and ungainly tripods.
But until now, you wouldn't have known where to look. Thousands of motion picture reels sit in the vaults at the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, Maryland—but only 71 titles contain aviation footage. This amazing real-time visual history of the first ever air war could have been lost to time. Luckily, we now can locate those needles in the giant haystack of the Archives, and we know precisely what moving images are on each reel.
Retired USAF Officer, aviation film consultant, and TV producer Phillip W. Stewart spent over 20 years reviewing hundreds of rare WWI films, isolating and then describing the 71 with aviation content. His new book, WAR WINGS: Films of the First Air War (ISBN 978-0-9793243-4-5; $24.95 trade paper; pms press; 219 pages; 2008), chronicles over 2,550 individual scenes of filmed action—while hundreds more are summarized. Scenes of pilot training, airplane manufacturing, fighting in the skies over France, and the post-Armistice testing of enemy airplanes, were all captured on film during 1917-1919. This well-researched landmark work is a boon to scholars, librarians, museum curators, and historians.
“Absolutely indispensable to a student of World War I aviation. I wish I had it when co-founding Wingspan, the Air & Space Channel…Phil Stewart’s succinct real by reel, scene by scene, analysis is complemented by a wonderful index.” —Walter J. Boyne, Author/Editor of numerous books on military aviation and National Aviation Hall of Fame Enshrinee
“Allows the reader to almost watch the films themselves unroll…the next best thing to seeing the films themselves.” —Leonard E. Opdycke, Editor/Publisher, WWI Aero: The Journal of the Early Aeroplane
Phil Stewart is a member of the American Aviation Historical Society, League of World War I Aviation Historians, and the Military Writers Society of America. He also volunteers as a motion picture film researcher for the National Museum of the United States Air Force. His first book, a Finalist Award Winner in the National “BEST BOOK 2007” Awards, BATTLEFILM: U.S. Army Signal Corps Motion Pictures of the Great War (ISBN 978-0-9793243-2-1) was published in 2007.
Both WAR WINGS and BATTLEFILM are available directly from the publisher at
http://www.pmspress.com or through Amazon.
