Hero of the Angry Sky. David S. Ingalls

      William F. Trimble

      Auburn University

      Series Editors’ Preface

      Wars have been the engines of North American history. They have shaped the United States and Canada, their governments, and their societies from the colonial era to the present. The volumes in our War and Society in North America book series investigate the effects of military conflict on the peoples in the United States and Canada. Other series are devoted to particular conflicts, types of conflicts, or periods of conflict; ours considers the history of North America over time through the lens of warfare and its effects on states, societies, and peoples. We conceive “war and society” broadly to include the military history of conflicts in or involving North America; responses to war, support as well as opposition opinion, peace movements, and pacifist attitudes; examinations of American citizens and Canadian citizens, colonists, settlers, and Native Americans fighting in or returning from wars; and studies of institutional, political, social, cultural, economic, or environmental factors specific to North America that affected wars. Our series explores the ties between regions and nations in times of extreme crisis. Ultimately, volumes in the War and Society in North America series should be a venue for authors of books that will appeal to a wide range of audiences in military history, social history, and national and transnational history.

      In Hero of the Angry Sky, Geoffrey Rossano fulfills all the expectations for our series. He brings to light the experiences of one of America’s first flying aces, the naval aviator David Ingalls in the First World War. Ingalls, an Ohioan from Cleveland, shot down five German aircraft and became the only ace in the U.S. Navy during that conflict. Ingalls joined the preparedness movement in 1916 as an undergraduate student at Yale University and he went on to volunteer service in the war. This book is not merely a combat narrative, however, because Rossano effectively blends Ingalls’s diary entries and personal letters in a whole-life story with fascinating material on flight training, aviation technology, and even France’s wartime society. His book also serves to commemorate the early years of naval aviation and the upcoming one-hundredth anniversary of the formation of the First Yale Unit of volunteers for the Great War. After the war ended, Ingalls went on to careers in law, business, Ohio politics, and national politics. As an assistant secretary of the navy in President Herbert Hoover’s administration, Ingalls directed the expansion of naval aviation and the development of aircraft carrier–based air power that would bear fruit in the Second World War. There can be no doubt that Ingalls’s own experiences as an aviator in the Great War left lasting impressions on him and made him a strong advocate for naval air power for the rest of this life.

      We are proud to have Geoffrey Rossano’s Hero of the Angry Sky as the inaugural volume in the series War and Society in North America. Throughout the review and editing phases, Rossano has been the consummate scholar. We could not have asked for a better author and partner in publishing. We would be remiss if we did not also thank Gillian Berchowitz, the editorial director at Ohio University Press. Gillian has been very supportive throughout the process of creating our series and in working with Geoffrey Rossano on Hero of the Angry Sky.