Featured battle : Fort L'Ecluse

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 05 July 1815 - 07 July 1815

This impregnable fortress was cut into the rock of the Rhône gorge. Surprisingly it was taken easily as the result of a fortuitous shot which exploded the main magazine. There were few casualties on both sides but the Garrison, National Guard troops, were all captured

Echoes From Dawn Skies - Early Aviators: A Lost Manuscript Rediscovered

Frederick Warren Merriam
In the 1950's F. W. Merriam, a key figure in early British aviation before the First World War, wrote a manuscript of reminiscences of his friends and colleagues from those days. People like Hugh Short (of Shorts Brothers), Lord Brabazon, Alliott Verdon-Roe, and many others contributed memories of the trials and tribulations of building, flying and often crashing those very early machines with delightful detail and understatement. However the book remained unpublished at Merriam's death in 1956 and disappeared from view. Then recently, with the help of Merriam's granddaughter Sylvia and Mick Oakey of The Aviation Historian magazine, the manuscript was unearthed, rescued and at last published. This book is a gem, plain and simple. Wittily and engagingly written, each chapter brings some new anecdote from the people who were there at the beginning, with Aviator's Certificates (original pilot's licences) numbers in the low double or even single figures. The book is produced to a very high quality and contains lots of appropriate photos and illustrations, along with an appendix listing all of the people Merriam himself taught to fly from the iconic Brooklands aerodrome. For anyone interested in the early years of pre-war flight, this book is an absolute must.
Air World Books, 2021