This is a little known story about the consequences of the wrangling between the War Office and the Admiralty that continued up to World War II and beyond, compounded by the view of senior sailors like Admiral Troubridge, in 1945, that to make all the Navy's pilots officers meant that there would be too many to absorb into general service, and that many would become redundant.

Therefore a whole lot of excellent men never got the ranks they deserved, right from 1912. There is sadly not a great deal about our war in this book, and what there is is marred by inaccuracies: surely he was Lord Haldane, not Haldine, and the Konigsberg (not Konisberg) was in East not West Africa, but still this book fills an unusual space in the history of Naval Aviation.