Boomerang on the Fuselage: The Australian experience of aviation in the Great War

Boomerang on the Fuselage
The Australian experience of Aviation in the Great War of 1914-1918
Men first fought in the air in the First World War. 1,500 of them were Australians. Nearly four and a half thousand Australians, one third of them pilots or observers were, involved in military aviation during the ‘Great War’ but many did not serve in Australian units. Almost half of all Australian pilots and observers, including seven of the top ten Australian flying aces, served in British or Allied air forces. ‘Boomerang on the Fuselage’ tells the whole story of Australian involvement in military aviation in the Great War from the early beginnings of Australian flying to the its deadly crescendo in the Autumn of 1918 when one out of ten of the aircraft battling a grimly determined German Air Service on the British sector of the Western Front was crewed by Australians.
‘Boomerang of the Fuselage’ is more than just the story of aces and dogfights. It also chronicles the contribution of Australians in design, innovation and leadership. The famous 56 Squadron RFC was founded and its ethos shaped by an Australian, an Australian tested and contributed to the design of the Sopwith Camel and other famous aircraft from that company and another designed one of the first mechanisms to allow a machine gun to fire through a propeller while another Australian was involved in ground-breaking research into altitude sickness and yet another developed the arrestor system still used on aircraft carriers.
The leaders, the heroes and the inventors who founded Australian aviation, and the world in which they lived and fought, all feature in this tightly written book that can be read from start to finish or opened randomly at any self-contained chapter and will satisfy the general reader as much as the aviation enthusiast.