The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War 1914-1918

Book excerpt: A hitherto rare volume of the Official History of Australia in the Great War, this is the History of the Australian Flying Corps on the western front and in the Middle Eastern theatres. Almost half of the text ( 12 of the 27 chapters) is devoted to the Australian air force in the skies over Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, culminating, appropriately, in the Battle of Armageddon. The AFC arrived on the western front in 1917, and their first ‘blooding' was above the mud-clogged battlefield of third Ypres (Passchendaele). Australian airmen supported ground attacks in the Battle of Cambrai in November, and during the great German spring offensives in the following year. Australian bomber planes backed up the Allied counter-offensives which broke the Hindenburg Line in the summer and autumn of 1918. Illustrated by 32 maps and 54 photographs.