Armageddon and Okra
Australia’s air operations in the Middle East a century apart

By Dr Lewis Frederickson

Published by Big Sky Publishing

RRP $19.99 in paperback | ISBN 9781922387554

This book marks the launch of a new Australian Air Campaign Series of publications produced by the Air Force’s History and Heritage Branch, with the intention of promoting an understanding of Air Force history.

The series begins with a book which compares and contrasts the dispatch of an Ottoman Army by Australian-led Imperial air power in the Wadi Fara on 21 September 1918, which occurred just five years after the advent of military aviation in Australia, with the deployment on 21 September 2014, 96 years after those events, of Australian squadrons to the same part of the world where they would remain for more than three years on operations against extremist terrorism.

In 1914, the fledgling Australian air service operated the flimsy Bristol Boxkite; four years later it was flying the far more advanced Bristol F2B Fighter. Nearly 100 years on, it was the RAAF Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets, supported by Airbus KC-30A air-to-air refuelling tankers and the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft that would demonstrate the extraordinary development of air power in those intervening years.

You can check out the Campaign series books on the Big Sky Publishing website at this link.