On the Wings of War: Documentary on Warplanes Airs Tonight

From the first flimsy wooden planes of World War I to the sleek unmanned drones of today, the documentary Warplane chronicles the role of aviation in combat. The show airs at 9 p.m. (Eastern) tonight and next Wednesday, November 8 and 15, on your local PBS station. Narrated by actor Stacy Keach, this engrossing program features archival film, new footage of vintage planes in flight, and film of craftsmen re-creating the Wright brothers early planes from their original plans, reports Kathy Blumenstock of the Washington Post (click the link to read her entire review).

"The Wrights invented the plane in 1903, but only 11 years after Kitty Hawk, in the first months of World War I, airplanes not only shaped the war but triggered a series of cascading events," said senior Pentagon adviser and former Air Force historian Richard Hallion, who is interviewed in the program. "There was a profound military effect. With air reconnaissance, commanders realized very quickly they had to deny the skies to the enemy. War had become three-dimensional."

Ironically, and much to the Wright brothers early disappointment, the U.S. government expressed no interest in their invention. The Wrights had "always believed their plane would be valuable to the military," said John Morrow, an aviation historian at the University of Georgia, in the documentary. "They ended up dismantling it and putting it away until they had made enough contacts to go to Europe and fly."

Executive producer Jared Lipworth expressed awe at the many small inventions that over the past 100 years have dramatically changed the scope of combat aviation. His favorite, when aviators "went from shooting each other with shotguns as they went by, to using mounted machine guns that were synchronized by propeller." The 2-part documentary traces such early combat improvements, the invention of the jet engine, and the development of computer avionics, as well as the influence of aviation on other inventions, including radar.

Part of the delight of the program is its portrayal of the romantic element that accompanied the shift to aerial warfare. As Morrow explained during his interview, "There is this notion of the knights of the air, this culture of aviation that seizes people. It's been romanticized, how these young men, not yet out of their teens, flew these planes that are fragile and flimsy, topping speeds of 110 mph."

You can share in the history and romance of aircraft development through stamps. County Stamp Center offers a wide selection of commemorative stamps featuring military and other aircraft. Click the post title to order the the 4-stamp sheetlet pictured. Part of a 4-sheetlet set issued by Liberia to celebrate a century of aviation, this handsomely rendered Military Airpower sheetlet features pictures of the Wright brothers and four warplanes in flight. To view other aircraft stamps, use the handy search feature on our website. You can search by key word, category or Scott catalog number. Visit County Stamp Center for all your philatelic needs and remember to tune in next Wednesday for Part 2 of the fascinating documentary Warplane.