New Zealanders were among the world's first aviators, with our geography and location making the prospect of flight an attractive one for our people and our nation. It comes as no surprise then that tens of thousands have served in not only the Royal New Zealand Air Force but in numerous air forces in peace, and in war around the world. Those New Zealanders were among the first to take to the air like a swift to the sky.

This brief account cannot do justice to them all but it serves to convey something of the nature of the challenges they have met and overcome, and of the sacrifices they have made, during the astonishingly rapid progress of aviation from its earliest beginnings, when every flight was an event if not a minor miracle, to the present, when aircraft have become so reliable that aircrew are almost in danger of becoming redundant.

Told through the collections of the Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum, this book is highly illustrated with ephemera, personal accounts, aircraft and previously unpublished photographs, together with a text following the development of our air forces, from its birth over the muddy trenches of WW1, to today's mobile defence force support backbone. This is the ultimate New Zealand Airforce book.