Status Updates From Flying Fury: Five Years in ...

He writes his journal with so much detail you feel you are in the open cockpit biplane and seeing everything whirling around him just as he sees it, looking at the men in the other open cockpits, hearing the crash of Spandau machine guns just like he hears it, watching friend and foe spiral to earth, and feeling that just as he often does.

Everything changes of course when fliers from all nations become part of a shooting war. Then being able to do acrobatics with your biplane can save your life. It’s very different to think about WW1 when you’re reading the daily journal of someone who is up in the sky nearly every single day - 100 years ago
they saw the rivers and railroads and farmhouses as often as they saw other airplanes up among the clouds.

The first flight took place at Kitty Hawk in the USA in 1903. This journal begins exactly 10 years later in 1913. It’s fascinating to be with those who were in at the early development of air travel. Nothing bores me - what the first engines were like (50 hp!), how they fussed with the wings, being able to feel the wind in your hair as you flew among the first gen of pilots ever. The war arrives August 1914.

Though family members fly F18s and helicopters I wish I could take up an open cockpit biplane. I suppose I shall never have the opportunity so I look for biplane writings instead. I was hunting for Sagittarius Rising but couldn’t locate it in ebook so chose this one, which came highly recommended. This was McCudden’s journal until his death in July 1918.