You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast.

I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world.

These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Vigllan, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark,

and so many other famous, and not so famous, adventures from throughout history.

Go to Explorerspodcast.com or just look us up on your podcast app.

That's the Expl World War interview.

This time I was joined by Dr. Michael Hankins, who has done a tremendous amount of research

in writing on fighter pilot culture and nostalgia in

the decades after the First World War.

Our interview, which will begin here in just a few moments, will track the evolution of

that fighter pilot culture throughout the course of the years during and after the First

World War, through the Second World War, and then into the post-war period.

The evolution of air power is a piece of history that is absolutely critical to understanding the Second World War and then into the post-war period. The evolution of air power is a piece of

history that is absolutely critical to understanding the Second World War, a statement that I do not

think should surprise anybody. Entering the First World War, aviation was a tool that most people

knew existed and knew that it might be useful, but could not at any way predict the ways in which it would

evolve.

What started out as a slow and fragile reconnaissance aircraft would morph into the first

dedicated bombers and fighter aircraft by the end of the war.

This rapid evolution during the war years left many with an open question.

Air power was certainly an important new military tool, but how should

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