Aircraft and Submarines

In 1918, the sky was barely thirty years old as a human domain. Willis J. Abbot witnessed a world transformed: wooden Wright flyers become weapons of war, and underwater boats that once amused monarchs become the terror of the Atlantic. This is their story, told by a man who watched it happen. Abbot traces the improbable journey from da Vinci's sketches to the death struggles of the Great War, capturing the feverish genius of inventors, the reckless courage of early pilots, and the cold calculus of naval engineers who built vessels to slip unseen beneath the waves. He writes with the urgency of someone who knows these machines are only beginning their reign over human affairs, speculating boldly on what air and submarine might become in decades to come. Part technical history, part front-line dispatches, this book preserves the astonishment of an age when humanity first learned to fly and to hide beneath the sea. For readers who want to understand how we arrived at the modern warfare of drones and nuclear submarines, this is where the thread begins.