It was World War I, the time of the Red Baron, Eddie Rickenbacker, and other “knights of the air” whose high-flying exploits captured the imaginations of millions. But the reality was less romantic. In spring 1917, British squadrons lost 200 pilots a month, with pilot life expectancy a mere 11 days. No Empty Chairs tells the story of that first great air war, illustrating its devastating physical and emotional impact, as well as its extraordinary acts of heroism. Private correspondence, diaries, reports, and interviews enrich the narrative.

No Empty Chairs: The Short and Heroic Lives of the Young Aviators Who Fought and Died in the First World War

History

MACKERSEY, Ian

Military

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

The conquest of the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, was one of the supreme achievements of the 20th century. On that day, two unknown bicycle mechanics, Wilbur and Orville Wright, launched the first successful powered airplane. They changed the world forever. In The Wright Brothers, Ian Mackersey gives us an intriguing new biography of these eccentric figures, whose genius unlocked the secrets of mechanical flight to realize one of man's oldest dreams.

The Wright Brothers: The Remarkable Story of the Aviation Pioneers Who Changed the World

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Little, Brown Book Group

Mayflower/Granada MM paperback, 1978, printed in Great Britain

Into the silk

Mayflower

During his brief 38 years of life, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was one of the most celebrated public idols in history, becoming for a few years in the early 30's a legend across the world for his brilliance as a pilot and his charismatic style among the pioneers of long-distance flying. The first person to fly an aircraft across the Pacific from America to Australia, he broke many solo flying records, and this brought him a status greater than any modern astronaut—a crowd of 300,000 greeted him in Sydney. But the price of his heroism was high, and the demands for celebrity and a messy private life ended in tragedy off the coast of Burma in 1935 in an attempt to fly from England to Australia. This biography explores his life and flying career.

Smithy: The Life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith

Engineering & Transportation

Transportation

The conquest of the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, was one of the supreme achievements of the 20th century. On that day, two unknown bicycle mechanics, Wilbur and Orville Wright, launched the first successful powered airplane. They changed the world forever. In The Wright Brothers, Ian Mackersey gives us an intriguing new biography of these eccentric figures, whose genius unlocked the secrets of mechanical flight to realize one of man's oldest dreams.

The empty chairs belonged, all too briefly, to the doomed young World War I airmen who failed to return from the terrifying daily aerial combats above the trenches of the Western Front. The edict of their commander-in-chief was the missing aviators were to be immediately replaced. Before the new faces could arrive, the departed men's vacant seats at the squadron dinner table were sometimes poignantly occupied by their caps and boots, placed there in a sad ritual by their surviving colleagues as they drank to their memory. Life for most of the pilots of the Royal Flying Corps was appallingly short. If they graduated alive and unmaimed from the flying training that killed more than half of them before they reached the front line, only a few would for very long survive the daily battles they fought over the ravaged moonscape of no-man's-land. Their average life expectancy at the height of the war was measured only in weeks. Parachutes that began to save their German enemies were denied them. Fear of incarceration, and the daily spectacle of watching close colleagues die in burning aircraft, took a devastating toll on the nerves of the world's first fighter pilots. Many became mentally ill. As they waited for death, or with luck the survivable wound that would send them back to "Blighty," they poured their emotions into their diaries and streams of letters to their loved ones at home. Drawing on these remarkable testimonies and pilots' memoirs, Ian Mackersey has brilliantly reconstructed the First Great Air War through the lives of their participants. As they waited to die, they shared their loneliness, their fears, triumphs, and squadron gossip with the families who lived in daily dread of the knock on the door that would bring the War Office telegram in its fateful green envelope.

No Empty Chairs

Leaders & Notable People

Phoenix

Physical description; 107 p. : ill., facisms, ports. ; 21 cm. Notes; Includes index. Subjects; Rolt, L. T. C. 1910-1974. Cressy (Boat).

Tom Rolt and the Cressy years

M.& M.Baldwin

Into the Silk: The Dramatic True Stories of Airmen Who Baled Out — And Lived (Developments in Aviation)

Sapere Books

Rescue Below Zero (Search and Rescue)

Smithy: The Life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (Pioneers of Aviation)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MACKERSEY, Ian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MACKERSEY, Ian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MACKERSEY, Ian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

No Empty Chairs: The Short and Heroic Lives of the Young Aviators Who Fought and Died in the First World War

The Wright Brothers: The Remarkable Story of the Aviation Pioneers Who Changed the World

Into the silk

Smithy: The Life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith

The Wright Brothers: The Remarkable Story of the Aviation Pioneers Who Changed the World

No Empty Chairs

Tom Rolt and the Cressy years

Into the Silk: The Dramatic True Stories of Airmen Who Baled Out — And Lived (Developments in Aviation)

Rescue Below Zero (Search and Rescue)

Smithy: The Life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (Pioneers of Aviation)