Meine Herren !
I. If you are interested in WW I themes - not only air warfare - I highly recommend the new volumes published over the past few years by the Austrian publisher VERLAG MILITARIA (
www.militaria.at). The website is in English, too .
Those books are based on real scientific work together with museums in Germany and France and are available in English language.
Them are massive volumes with completely new photographies ( first class quality toujours !) of real artifacts in full colour and
with historic (unpublished) photos, even original autochrome early real colour photos in the volumes on the French Army.
Until now they do not deal much with airforce items.
You can expext up to 1000 frames and more
They deal with organization, equipment, weaponry, uniforms.
Qualitywise the best I ever had in my hands - photos + text aaaand print quality !
One Volume is around 100€.
II. Albert Kahn (oh yes, an ancestor to that banker Strauss-Kahn who in the US was accused of a violent sex affair last year ) wanted to create a photographic record of our whole earth via autochrome colour photography. Among them you will find WW I frames. There is a BBC book and a BBC DVD-Series available via Amazon and very interesting - you may plunge into this time via real colour photography...
III. Schiffer Military History
a) SCHLACHTFLIEGER by Rick Duiven & Dan-San Abbot (Schlachtflieger (sing. and plural) = Ground Attack airplane /s)
b) The Imperial German Eagles in World War One - Their Postcards and Pictures by Bronnenkamp
large volumes with a plethora of photos (b/w) and lots of info
IV. FLYING MACHINE PRESS
Austro-Hungarian Army Aircraft of WW I by Peter M. Grosz George Haddon Peter Schiemer (+ Organization of the Fliegertruppe)
large volume, drawings, lots of b/w frames
V. OSPREY ELITE
Osprey Elite # 135
German Air Forces 1914 - 1918 Ian Schirmer (Organization)
Military History is so occupied with WW 2 themes, that the Great War , the summer of '14 and the beginning of what Charles de
Gaulle (POW nearby where I live) called "Europes Thirty Years War" was obscured by gunsmoke.
To us those times are now as far away as to those men in 1914 Waterloo was.
( But maybe you still knew someone having witnessed WW 1 times ?)
But the shaping of our world was cast by a world that got out of shape then.
Even people as from far away as your beautiful country were sucked into the maelstrom.
Besides :THE WOLF- story of a WW1 german raider is a very nice book written by two Australians! Highly recommended.
Therefore real info on WW I items was a mere jigsaw puzzle.
Up to now (Hoeppner's book is an artifact postwar 1918 I assume) I never came across of a groundbraking volume on the whole theme of the German Fliegertruppe (literally this means: Aviator Troops; Air Force is the better translation to WW 2 Luftwaffe).
As I noticed: even in our times shortly afterwards a lot is obscured, and only for ex. 50 years later Aviation historians have to dig
severly for information on the Luftwaffe etc. .
Lot of archives burnt down by incendiary bombs , too .
Maybe there were volumes written in the 1960s or 1970s and are out of print now.
Sometimes Amazon is a good source to find books - I got my anglo-american military history books via Amazon because
you won't get very far in an normal book shop.
Maybe even Hoeppner's volume will show up.
If I come across a book introducing into the Fliegertruppe, I will inform the forum, of course.
If there are any questions on the translation of german military terms or the real conception of a term please feel free to ask.
Knowing expressions from 'the other side' enhances the feeling for a theme .
The sound of a language translates emotions.
bizz bald, Gunther
