owered flight had barely advanced past infancy by 1914, when the assassination of Austria-Hungary’sArchdukeFranz Ferdinand in Sarajevo sent Europe plunging into World War I. While ground forces in western Europe settled into a miserable stalemate inside a network of trenches that grew to zigzag across the continent, a new breed of warrior took the fight into the skies. Despite the aura of romance bestowed on these “knights of the air,” the aviators’ war was miserable in its own way. Pilots lucky enough to survive their training faced long
