"Prepare to launch aircraft!" One can almost hear the order booming from the island's loudspeaker. In From the Flight Deck, the exhilarating and always dangerous world of aircraft carrier aviation is covered in thirty-two excerpts of the best fiction and nonfiction writing on the subject. Beginning with the first success in 1910 by American aviator Eugene Ely, the anthology then covers British operations during World War I and the unique contributions to carrier warfare made by the U.S and British navies during the 1920s and 1930s. World War II and the Korean War are also well represented-with excerpts from such American classics as Walter Lord's Day of Infamy, Ted Lawson's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and James A. Michener's The Bridges of Toko Ri-as the period during which carriers and their crews matured into the indispensable weapon systems we nearly take for granted today. Experiments with larger and more capable aircraft as well as advances in a vast array of carrier-related technology bring the reader to the present day, with selections by such noted authors as Norman Polmar (Aircraft Carriers) and George Wilson (Supercarrier). The diverse experiences of U.S. and foreign naval aviators in the Suez Operation in 1956, the French and American wars in Vietnam, the Falklands War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Allied air campaign in Bosnia are all covered, often through eyewitness accounts. For example, in Peter B. Mersky's book, RF-8 Crusader Units Over Cuba and Vietnam, he relates a chilling first-person account of the fire on board the U.S.S. Oriskany in 1966. In She's Just Another Navy Pilot, Laurie Hirschman describes the major social changes caused by the arrival of women fighter pilots in the Navy. From its primitive start during the earliest years of flight, through its numerous tests in the crucible of war, and to the high-tech operations of recent missions, all the thrills and risks of nearly a century of carrier aviation are captured in From the Flight Deck.

Peter B. Mersky is well known for his military aviation books, for some hundred magazine articles, and for hundreds of book reviews on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviation. A lifelong aviation enthusiast, he served sixteen years as the assistant editor, then editor, for Approach magazine, the Navy's aviation safety publication. He is a retired officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and he has held close ties to naval aviation for more than thirty years. Mersky is also a series editor for Brassey's Aviation Classics series. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia