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The Great War is in its final year. Germany has just launched 'Kaiserschlacht' - the Emperor's Battle - a final devastating blow that will ultimately decide the course of the war. The Allied armies, exhausted after years in the mud of Flanders and France, are sent reeling back on their lines of supply. Meanwhile, above the battlefield, the men of Britain's Royal Flying Corps, France's Escadrilles de Chasse, and America's fledgling Pursuit squadrons are hurled into battle to stem the tide of defeat. The young men of the German Luftstreitkrafte, confident of final victory, rise to meet the challenge. Daily, these brave airmen climb into their wood and canvas 'crates' to battle in the air.
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Behind the lines, newspaper columnists desperate to deflect public gaze from the horrors of the trenches, write of the 'chivalry of the air' - the brave nobility of the young pilots who joust in single combat above the ancient knightly battlefields of Crecy and Agincourt. But the reality is quite different - the aeroplane is in its infancy, and parachutes are not available to the vast majority of fliers. Flying in the Great War is about survival, pure and simple. Death can come without warning, and in many forms - the structural failure of a wing can send a helpless pilot plummeting 3 miles down to certain death; a ruptured fuel line can mean a slow, agonizing death by burning. No, there is no chivalry in the skies above Flanders, only fear, and the threat of a violent end.
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