Britain's Forgotten Fighters of the First World War

Britain's Forgotten Fighters of the First World War
Author: Paul R. Hare
Publisher:
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781781551974

Those with any interest in the First World War will have have heard of the planes most associated with that conflict - the legendary Sopwith Camel and Royal Aircraft Factory's S.E.5a, which are often called the 'Spitfire' and 'Hurricane' of the Great War. Aviation enthusiasts might even know of the Camel's predecessors, the Sopwith Pup or the Triplane. But what of the many other planes that saw active service in the war? This is the story of those armed aeroplanes whose names few people can recall, the 'forgotten fighters' of the First World War, including the pusher 'gunbuses' of the early war years, the strange 'pulpit' design of the B.E.9, the desperate conversions of reconnaissance machines that were never intended to be armed, and those which were thought too tricky for the average pilot to handle. It is also the story of the brave men who flew these machines, fighting, and too often dying, for a cause they believed in. Some of these aeroplanes only served in small numbers and others in areas away from the main battle on the Western Front, but all made a vital contribution to the winning of the war. And these lost but iconic fighter aircraft, and the brave young men who flew them, deserve to be remembered just as much as the more famous aces in their legendary machines. This is their story.

The World's War

The World's War
Author: David Olusoga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2014-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1781858969

'A groundbreaking and important book that will surely reframe our understanding of the Great War' David Lammy 'A genuinely groundbreaking piece of research' BBC History 'Meticulously researched and beautifully written' Military History Monthly In a sweeping narrative, David Olusoga describes how Europe's Great War became the World's War – a multi-racial, multi-national struggle, fought in Africa and Asia as well as in Europe, which pulled in men and resources from across the globe. Throughout, he exposes the complex, shocking paraphernalia of the era's racial obsessions, which dictated which men would serve, how they would serve, and to what degree they would suffer. As vivid and moving as it is revelatory and authoritative, The World's War explores the experiences and sacrifices of four million non-European, non-white people whose stories have remained too long in the shadows.

Honor

Honor
Author: James Bowman
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 1594031983

"From the earliest records of human civilization until the dawn of the twentieth century, and in widely separated cultures throughout the world, the story of honor was inseparable from the story of mankind. Today, an acquaintance with the concept of honor is indispensable to understanding the culture of the Islamic world and its sense of grievance against the West, where honor has been disregarded or actively despised for three-quarters of a century." "James Bowman draws from an wealth of sources across many centuries to illuminate honor's curious history in our own culture, and he discovers that Western honor was always different from that found elsewhere. Its idiosyncratic qualities derived partly from the classical tradition but mainly from the Judeo-Christian heritage, whose emphases on individual morality and, more recently, on sincerity and authenticity in private and personal life have acted as continual challenges to the traditional notion of honor as it is still maintained in other parts of the world. These challenges to honor and the accommodations with it that they ultimately produced are a fundamental theme in our own culture's distinctive history; and the eventual collapse of the honor culture in the West is the background against which the War on Terror and the Clash of Civilizations ought to be seen."--Jacket.

We Also Served

We Also Served
Author: Vivien Newman
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2014-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783462256

We Also Served is a social history of women's involvement in the First World War. Dr Vivien Newman disturbs myths and preconceptions surrounding women's war work and seeks to inform contemporary readers of countless acts of derring-do, determination, and quiet heroism by British women, that went on behind the scenes from 1914-1918.??In August 1914 a mere 640 women had a clearly defined wartime role. Ignoring early War Office advice to 'go home and sit still', by 1918 hundreds of thousands of women from all corners of the world had lent their individual wills and collective strength to the Allied cause. ??As well as becoming nurses, munitions workers, and members of the Land Army, women were also ambulance drivers and surgeons; they served with the Armed Forces; funded and managed their own hospitals within sight and sound of the guns. At least one British woman bore arms, and over a thousand women lost their lives as a direct result of their involvement with the war. ??This book lets these all but forgotten women speak directly to us of their war, their lives, and their stories.

Ireland and the Great War

Ireland and the Great War
Author: Niamh Gallagher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2021-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350246697

On 4 August 1914 following the outbreak of European hostilities, large sections of Irish Protestants and Catholics rallied to support the British and Allied war efforts. Yet less than two years later, the Easter Rising of 1916 allegedly put a stop to the Catholic commitment in exchange for a re-emphasis on the national question. In Ireland and the Great War Niamh Gallagher draws upon a formidable array of original research to offer a radical new reading of Irish involvement in the world's first total war. Exploring the 'home front' and Irish diasporic communities in Canada, Australia, and Britain, Gallagher reveals that substantial support for the Allied war effort continued largely unabated not only until November 1918, but afterwards as well. Rich in social texture and with fascinating new case studies of Irish participation in the conflict, this book has the makings of a major rethinking of Ireland's twentieth century.

Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

Forgotten Voices Of The Great War
Author: Max Arthur
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2012-08-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1446446255

In 1960, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing WWI veterans and interviewing them at length in order to record the experiences of ordinary individuals in war. The IWM aural archive has become the most important archive of its kind in the world. Authors have occasionally been granted access to the vaults, but digesting the thousands of hours of footage is a monumental task. Now, forty years on, the Imperial War Museum has at last given author Max Arthur and his team of researchers unlimited access to the complete WWI tapes. These are the forgotten voices of an entire generation of survivors of the Great War. The resulting book is an important and compelling history of WWI in the words of those who experienced it.

The Royal Aircraft Factory

The Royal Aircraft Factory
Author: Paul R. Hare
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2021-12-02
Genre: History
ISBN:

The story of the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, forerunner of the World’s premier aeronautical research establishment wherein were designed a diversity of aircraft including many of those that equipped the RFC, RNAS and RAF during the First World War. Originally established to build observation balloons for the Victorian British Army, the Factory later expanded to employ over 3500 people by mid-1916, at which time it became the subject of a political controversy that ended in a judicial enquiry. In 1918 its title was changed to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, not only to avoid a clash of initials with the newly formed Royal Air Force but to better define its changing role. Each of the many designs for airships and aeroplanes that were produced by the Factory between 1908 and 1918 is described in detail, illustrated by photographs, and with three-view drawings provided for the more prominent designs.

Britain's Forgotten Wars

Britain's Forgotten Wars
Author: Ian Hernon
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 773
Release: 2016-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0750980567

This is a collection of Ian Heron's three books, "Massacre and Retribution", "The Savage Empire" and "Blood in the Sand". Much has been written about the great British military triumphs of the 19th century, but there are many more astonishing stories which have been largely forgotten. These forgotten wars cannot hope to compete in history with the Crimean War or the Boer War, but for acts of sheer courage and endurance, they deserve to be remembered. Using the actual words of the soldiers themselves, Ian Hernon presents an account which evokes Victorian colonial warfare in all its barbarity and the self-righteous belief of the British in the rectitude of their cause.

The Pity of War

The Pity of War
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 650
Release: 2008-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 078672529X

From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. That the war was wicked, horrific, and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.