new book on relationship between german air and ground forces in 1914

[Mbowden23]

For anyone here who is interested, my book on the relationship between german air and ground forces in 1914 was released earlier this week:

Back cover:
The Great War’s Finest series is the first detailed operational history of the Imperial German Air Service during the Great War (1914–1918), the first war in the air. Volume 1 covers in unprecedented detail the creation, organization, and operational history of the Fliegertruppe over the Western Front in 1914. Drawing upon a wide range of rare primary sources, Volume 1 provides the reader with a unique narrative that explains the relationship between German air and ground forces and the Fliegertruppe’s dramatic impact on the epic battles of the Western Front in 1914.

Lavishly illustrated, Volume 1 includes 35 color maps, 165 photos and postcards, 72 of which are in color, and several color profiles of 1914 German reconnaissance airplanes in its 378 pages. Extensive order of battle information and other important data are summarized in the appendices.


https://www.amazon.com/Great-Wars-Fines ... bc?ie=UTF8

[Latze]

Hi Matt,

thank you for posting this, I immediately ordered the book. Do you plan to have one volume for every year and front of the war? I Ould like that very much. In Germany there is a dearth of serious operational military history but interestingly almost at the same time as your book "Die deutschen Luftstreitkräfte im Ersten Weltkrieg" by Niklas Napp was published. For the same price it has only 12 pages for the Marne and Tannenberg combined and no color pictures but still... Maybe I will post a comparison here but first I have to finish Michael Woods Alexander book.

best regards
Matthias

[Mbowden23]

Thanks for the comment Matthias. Yes I plan on having a volume for each year of the war (with 2 volumes for 1918 and yet another volume for the Eastern, Italian, Balkan and Ottoman theaters). I have Napp's book but was already finished with the text for volume 1 when I got a hold of it so I could not cite it. It is a good book but written in a much different manner than mine. I would certainly say they compliment one another.

Let me know what you think

-Matt-

[Mbowden23]

Many thanks to Dave Hooper at GWSIG https://sites.google.com/site/greatwarsig/Resources for the kind review of the book:

"Great Wars Finest by Matt Bowden is the first of six volumes chronicling the operational history of Germany’s air service. This volume concentrates on the first year of the war in excruciating detail, beginning with the origins of the air service in 1908 and ending with the creation of Germanys first bomber squadron in November 1914. Much has been written about the early years of the RFC in various publications, but this is the first book that I have come across dedicated solely to the early years of the German Air service.

"This is definitely a book to read from cover to cover, rather than a dip in style reference book. The amount of information contained within the books 378 pages is phenomenal and as such I suspect that this series will be the definitive reference on the history of the air service for many years to come.

"The book is well illustrated with photographs, paintings, maps and even a few colour profiles of aircraft but these are included to support the text rather than as a key selling feature of the book and I rather think that the publishers have got the balance of text and illustrations just right in this particular publication.

"Once in a while a book comes along that is genuinely jaw dropping, and this is one such book. What is even more surprising is that I believe that this book is Matt Bowdens’s first publication. I would highly recommend this book to anybody interested in the purely historical aspect of the German’s Air Service rather than the technical history of aircraft and look forward to the continuation of the story in further volumes. Many thanks to Jack Herris and Aeronaut publishing for this review sample."