N.B. First World War airmen pioneers of air warfare [Video]

When pilots took to the air for combat during the First World War, it had been less than 15 years since the Wright brothers’ famous first flight in 1903. Aircraft were in the development stage, made of canvas over a wood frame and held together by something similar to piano wire.

“They were underpowered. They were quite flimsy, and if you happened to land heavily, sometimes they would be damaged,” said J. Brent Wilson, a historian who has just published “War Among the Clouds: New Brunswick Airmen in the Great War.”

Even training could be deadly for the pioneering pilots, he noted.

About 22,000 Canadians served in the British air services during the First World War, mostly from well-educated families in Ontario and Western Canada, Wilson said in a recent interview. But at least 252 were from New Brunswick, many from small farming communities.

They flew not just on the …