Air Combat (The Story of Flight, 12) Review

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(More customer reviews)Introducing younger readers to the topic of air combat is dicey. Though air combats can be dramatic and colorful, they do boil down to someone often getting killed, sometimes in horrible fashion, or wounded. I have to give Ole Steen Hansen credit for his deft handling of the subject in this book, published in 2003 as part of THE STORY OF FLIGHT series. AIR COMBAT presents a balanced portrait of air combat, detailing various famous air battles, aircraft and air warriors while denoting that the bottom line was destroyed aircraft and dead aircrew.
Hansen's coverage of air combat is chronological; four pages being devoted to WW I, two to the inter-war years, six pages to WW II and so on. Text, photographs and artwork cover such items as Werner Voss' epic WW I dogfight, the Battle of Britain, WW II nightfighters, Rolling Thunder ops' over North Vietnam, Topgun, future fighters, etc. As always, the text is clear, concise and easily-understandable by junior birdmen. Artwork can vary; some illustrations are wonderfully dramatic and fairly accurate; other pieces, less so.
To my mind, AIR COMBAT is an excellent introduction to the subject for the 9-12 age group. Decades ago, some now-forgotten title sparked in me an interest in military aviation that has persisted to this day. Conceivably AIR COMBAT could do the same for today's young readers. Recommended.

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