Those magnificent men - the life and death of a British airman

Send us Fan MailOf all areas of warfare that developed during the Great War, the advances in technology that accompanied the development of flight were surely the most dramatic.Our story of the Royal Flying Corps at war begins in a residential street in east London, where a non-descript house carries a unique place in the history of aerial warfare.  We hear about the German Zeppelin raids in London before looking at the changing role played by aircraft.  From being viewed as a quirky novelty in 1913, to being an essential part of military planning by 1915, men rushed to join the glamour of flight.We follow the life of a young British officer, Oswald Nixon, who joined the RFC and had been qualified as a pilot for just six days when he had the great misfortune to come across a squadron from Jasta 2, the elite fighter group of the German air force.  We hear the tragic tale of the German airman who shot Nixon down, the discovery of some macabre pictures in the German archives,  and we look at the myth of the "twenty-minuters".Support the podcastwww.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblogwww.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallen