Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events, Volume 1: 1909-1945

AIRCRAFT CARRIERS is the definitive history of world aircraft carrier development and operations. This two-volume work describes the political and technological factors that influenced aircraft carrier design and construction, meticulously records their operations, and explains their impact.

In Volume 1, Norman Polmar gives particular emphasis to carriers in action, from World War I, through the Japanese strikes against China in the 1930s, to World War II in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, and Pacific theaters. It begins with French inventor Clément Ader’s remarkably prescient 1909 description of an aircraft carrier. The book then explains how Britain led the world in the development of aircraft-carrying ships and was soon followed by the United States, Japan, and several other nations. While ship-based aircraft in World War I had limited impact, they foreshadowed the aircraft carriers built in the 1920s and 1930s. The volume also describes the aircraft operating from those ships and their commanders. Written in collaboration with senior carrier experts in Great Britain and Japan, Capt. Eric M. Brown and Gen. Minoru Genda, it is heavily illustrated with some 205 photos and maps, some never before published.

Volume 2, which is forthcoming from Potomac Books in fall 2006/winter 2007 (ISBN 1-57488-665-7), will cover 1946 to the present.