During the Great War, 1914-1918, New Zealanders were keen participants in the new field of military aviation. Close to 850 men, and a small number of women, from the Empire's southernmost dominion sought positions in the British and Australian air services. Drawing on extensive archival material from New Zealand, Australia and Britain, historian Dr Adam Claasen explores New Zealand's reluctance to embrace military aviation, the challenges facing the establishment of local flying schools and the journey undertaken by the New Zealanders from their antipodean farms and towns to the battlefields of the Great War. In spite of their modest numbers the New Zealanders' wartime experiences were incredibly varied. Across the conflict, New Zealand aviators could be found flying above the sands of the Middle East and Mesopotamia, the grey waters of the North Sea , the jungles of East Africa, the sprawling metropolis of London and the rolling hills of northern France and Belgium. Flying the open cockpit wood-and-wire biplanes of the Great War, New Zealanders undertook reconnaissance sorties, carried out bombing raids, photographed enemy entrenchments, defended England from German airships, strafed artillery emplacements and engaged enemy fighters. By the time the war ended many had been killed, others highly decorated, some elevated to `ace' status and a handful occupied positions of considerable command. This book tells their unique and extraordinary untold story.

Adolf Hitler had high hopes for his conquest of Norway, which held both great symbolic and great strategic value for the Fuhrer. Despite early successes, however, his ambitious northern campaign foundered and ultimately failed. Adam Claasen for the first time reveals the full story of this neglected episode and shows how it helped doom the Third Reich to defeat.

Hitler and Raeder, the chief of the German navy, were determined to take and keep Norway. By doing so, they hoped to preempt Allied attempts to outflank Germany, protect sea lanes for German ships, access precious Scandinavian minerals for war production, and provide a launchpad for Luftwaffe and naval operations against Great Britain. Beyond those strategic objectives, Hitler also envisioned Norway as part of a pan-Nordic stronghold--a centerpiece of his new world order. But, as Claasen shows, Hitler's grand expectations were never realized.

Gring's Luftwaffe was the vital spearhead in the invasion of Norway, which marked a number of wartime firsts. Among other things, it involved the first large-scale aerial operations over sea rather than land, the first time operational objectives and logistical needs were fulfilled by air power, and the first deployment of paratroopers.

Although it got off to a promising start, the German effort, particularly against British and arctic convoys, was greatly hampered by flawed strategic thinking, interservice rivalries between the Luftwaffe and navy, the failure to develop a long-range heavy bomber, the diversion of planes and personnel to shore up the German war effort elsewhere, and the northern theater's harsh climate and terrain.

Claasen's study covers every aspect of this ill-fated campaign from the 1940 invasion until war's end and shows how it was eventually relegated to a backwater status as Germany fought to survive in an increasingly unwinnable war. His compelling account sharpens our picture of the German air force and widens our understanding of the Third Reich's way of war.