Hello, welcome to the history hit World Wars podcast. I'm James Rogers, and in this episode we're jumping back to

1915, 1916, and the Gallipoli campaign, known by its veterans as one of the worst places to serve during the First World War.

Think fierce ferocious fighting, but also unsanitary conditions, terrible food, lice, flies, hot weather, and it's for that reason we focus a lot on the experiences of the soldiers on the ground.

But what we don't really hear about is the fierce air battle that was going on overhead.

In fact, when we think of the First World War, we don't really talk much about that fledgling air power

and the experimentations that were going on.

And so in this episode, first recorded for Dan So's history here, it's great that we get to talk

to Mike Pavolac, Professor of Air Power Studies at the Air Command and Staff College for the US Air Force,

who tells us about this forgotten history of Air Power at Gallipoli. Valley. Mike, thank you so much coming back on the podcast. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Now listen, you told me something when we were caught in the previous podcast, and more importantly

when we're in the pub for several hours afterwards.

About you have an expertise in First War of theation, that's fine, but in Gall Gallipoli and I must confess to being I did not

realize the the aerial side of the Gallipoli campaign was pretty significant

indeed it's something that I fell into when I was a graduate student many years ago.

It's hard to believe it was 1997 when I was at University of Calgary in Canada.

Tim Travers was one of my advisors there and he was writing a book at the time which

has subsequently become Gallipley 1915 and it's a definitive account and he had a big

box of Gallipley documents and he told his he was teaching the graduate students,

I was one of them, how to do primary document research and I was sort of sifting through some of his documents

and I found reference to a couple of airplanes, a couple of

squadrons specifically and that's what ignited my interest because I'd read a lot of

books on Gallipoli and I was taking the graduate class on Gallipoli so I was doing even more reading and there was simply nothing there

...