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The German Air Force I Knew 1914-1918: Memoirs of the Imperial German Air Force in the Great War
Major Georg Paul Neumann was a former German Air Force officer who had served in the Great War. He produced his outstanding survey of the German Air Force in 1920 while the events were still recent history. He was able to draw on his own experience and his contacts to compile a large number of personal accounts from officers and men who had so recently fought in the cause.
The result is an accurate, faithful and comprehensive review of the aircraft, personnel and organization of the force which began life in 1910 as the Imperial German Army Air Service and ended the war as the Luftstreitkräfte.
This comprehensive and compelling review includes a series of primary sources dealing with some of the unusual and lesser known aspects of the Luftstreitkräfte including a gripping account of defending a Zeppelin against attack by British fighters.
Major Neumann's indispensable work has never been surpassed and this English language translation is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the realities of the war in the air in the Great War.
ISBN: 1783463139
ISBN-13: 978-1783463138
The result is an accurate, faithful and comprehensive review of the aircraft, personnel and organization of the force which began life in 1910 as the Imperial German Army Air Service and ended the war as the Luftstreitkräfte.
This comprehensive and compelling review includes a series of primary sources dealing with some of the unusual and lesser known aspects of the Luftstreitkräfte including a gripping account of defending a Zeppelin against attack by British fighters.
Major Neumann's indispensable work has never been surpassed and this English language translation is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the realities of the war in the air in the Great War.
ISBN: 1783463139
ISBN-13: 978-1783463138
253 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1920
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 1, 2026
Written in 1920 for the German outsider and abbreviated to half its length in an English translation, this remains in its first half a valuable discussion on the development of airplanes, airships and observation balloons from their earliest military applications to 1918, with a touching look forward to their applications in peace: heavy four engine bombers hinted at transatlantic travel. Bombing is identified as a specific outgrowth of siege warfare in a third dimension.
Similar to tanks, the triad equilibrium between engine power, weight and armament kept bedevilling the German air force in the give-and-take for arial supremacy. Some passages are highly technical, reminding us of the oversimplified word “outdated”.
All this is apt to appreciate the testimonials in the second half.
"Only those who have actual experience can realise what it is like to be boxed up in a narrow engine gondola with the engine roaring in his ears for 24h on end. In addition one must take into consideration the extreme cold & difficulty of working in the rarified atmosphere of 20.000 ft (7+ km) under conditions our bodies are not accustomed to. The effects of Oxygen shortage causes mountain sickness, lassitude etc."
Similar to tanks, the triad equilibrium between engine power, weight and armament kept bedevilling the German air force in the give-and-take for arial supremacy. Some passages are highly technical, reminding us of the oversimplified word “outdated”.
All this is apt to appreciate the testimonials in the second half.
"Only those who have actual experience can realise what it is like to be boxed up in a narrow engine gondola with the engine roaring in his ears for 24h on end. In addition one must take into consideration the extreme cold & difficulty of working in the rarified atmosphere of 20.000 ft (7+ km) under conditions our bodies are not accustomed to. The effects of Oxygen shortage causes mountain sickness, lassitude etc."
April 27, 2026
This review is for the Pen & Sword 2014 Hardcover publication.
This was a very disappointing book. Firstly, for a book subtitled "Memoirs of the Imperial German Air Force in the Great War" there is an amazing lack of first-hand accounts. The first 90-pages of 250 are an amateur history version of the force's development of aircraft and operations over the course of the war. There is no value there for any modern history reader, and most of what is said is repeated later by all of the different authors.
After that there are four short recollections of a few pages each, one each of an artillery spotting mission in a balloon, a day bombing raid, a night bombing raid, and a trench strafing mission. The final 30 pages have interesting, yet very broad (but also very short), memoirs from pilots in the less talked about theatres of war (Italy, Suez, Mesopotamia).
For anyone interested in history, the most worthwhile part of this book isn't what is written by the multiple authors, but how they write it. The authors plainly take the view that the war was lost by weak German politicians, everything the Air Force did was good and incredibly effective, and any of the other military branches that were unimpressed by the Air Force are simply uninformed. This is maybe best exemplified by the blatantly false claim of "lots" of submarines being sunk by German airships, where not a single record of that occurring even once can be found today.
For this specific edition I have to mention the truly innumerable about of typographical errors. The book already takes a lot of focus to read given that it's a foreign language translated into early-20th century English prose, but piled on top of that is what are clearly errors from some sort of Optical Character Recognition software. A small sampling of these errors are "191G" for "1916", "Hying" for "flying", "AH" for "All", "dames" for "flames", "eights" for "sights", and "tines" for "lines", among too many others to count and commas and periods being constantly transposed.
For this edition also the one time that a page is referenced for photos the page numbers are wrong, and the photos that appear sporadically throughout the book are placed nonsensically, never appearing in the chapter that they're relevant to.
This was a very disappointing book. Firstly, for a book subtitled "Memoirs of the Imperial German Air Force in the Great War" there is an amazing lack of first-hand accounts. The first 90-pages of 250 are an amateur history version of the force's development of aircraft and operations over the course of the war. There is no value there for any modern history reader, and most of what is said is repeated later by all of the different authors.
After that there are four short recollections of a few pages each, one each of an artillery spotting mission in a balloon, a day bombing raid, a night bombing raid, and a trench strafing mission. The final 30 pages have interesting, yet very broad (but also very short), memoirs from pilots in the less talked about theatres of war (Italy, Suez, Mesopotamia).
For anyone interested in history, the most worthwhile part of this book isn't what is written by the multiple authors, but how they write it. The authors plainly take the view that the war was lost by weak German politicians, everything the Air Force did was good and incredibly effective, and any of the other military branches that were unimpressed by the Air Force are simply uninformed. This is maybe best exemplified by the blatantly false claim of "lots" of submarines being sunk by German airships, where not a single record of that occurring even once can be found today.
For this specific edition I have to mention the truly innumerable about of typographical errors. The book already takes a lot of focus to read given that it's a foreign language translated into early-20th century English prose, but piled on top of that is what are clearly errors from some sort of Optical Character Recognition software. A small sampling of these errors are "191G" for "1916", "Hying" for "flying", "AH" for "All", "dames" for "flames", "eights" for "sights", and "tines" for "lines", among too many others to count and commas and periods being constantly transposed.
For this edition also the one time that a page is referenced for photos the page numbers are wrong, and the photos that appear sporadically throughout the book are placed nonsensically, never appearing in the chapter that they're relevant to.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews