First Air War

Gr 9 Up—"Between 1914 and 1918 aviation designers turned the airplane from eccentric novelty to decisive weapon." The astounding feat is chronicled here in a riveting narrative that alternates between present and past. In the present, a camera crew follows a team of engineers in New Zealand who specialize in re-creating World War I planes. When the focus is on the past, archival footage and photography accompany the narrator who, with the assistance of period experts, describes the high stakes race between Britain and Germany to build the best plane. Attention-grabbing details underscore the rapidity of aviation's evolution. For instance, early on in the war planes were made of little more than linen, wood, and wicker. Later models were much sturdier and armed with machine guns and telegraphs. The past and present are bridged when engineers in New Zealand set about to discover how World War I pilots made clear photographs and how they fired weapons at ground targets from the shaky confines of an airplane. As the team experiments, it uncovers pitfalls that befell the pilots—gasoline fumes fogging up goggles, machine guns shooting off the propellers of the planes from which they are mounted, to name two.