new history of the RNZAF

The independent Royal New Zealand Air Force was effectively created in 1937 and in 1987 it commissioned a history from Grantham House (Graham Stewart) for its 50th anniversary. Another 25 years later and it has commissioned, via the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, another, this time published by Random House.

This account begins in 1909 with the gift of a Blériot plane to New Zealand in response to the first awareness of the potential of military air power. Early experiments in flying were followed by some young New Zealanders taking the dangerous adventure of flying over the battlefields of Europe in WW1. However, it was WW2 by which time aviation had become a new and fundamental aspect of warfare where the RNZAF, inexperienced and unprepared, needed to train thousands of aircrew for action, and many distinguished themselves during the war.

There have been regional confrontations since WW2 which have involved the RNZAF directly or indirectly but with the perceived need on the part of the public for civil defence and search and rescue to be above foreign conflicts, governments have reduced the number of bases and personnel, decided to focus on peacekeeping, and killed off the air combat force. After 9/11 the war on terror reintroduced a global outlook, along with hectic deployments and leaps in technology, paralleled by the stress of cutbacks in personnel.

In any commissioned history you tend to be suspicious of how much it represents the 'official version' where blunders are glossed over, and missed opportunities downplayed or ignored.  We're not going to comment on that, but can say that overall, author Margaret McClure has done a good job of meeting her task of a history of a government organisation and simultaneously catering to the interests of those who have served in the Air Force over the years.  The interests of those into military aircraft are catered for less, but are not ignored.  Accompanying the text are a large number of illustrations in both monochrome and colour mostly from the Air Force Museum with a few from other libraries.  These include artworks, which while not high calibre, do the job.

On the minus side, it is sadly another example of a book which has been let down by its designer.  The first thing you notice is that the outer page margin is quite slim (10 mm) while the inside margin is wide.  Often the only thing that fills this space is a short caption for an illustration on the opposite page.  Why not put the caption underneath the pic?  This waste of 'artistic' white space doesn't end there; the body text is ragged left aligned, and the leading quite big.  While fonts are a matter of personal preference, we are not fans of sans serif fonts for body text - they are fine for tables, captions and headings.  Some photos are spread across the gutter, fortunately involving parts of them which don't obliterate any of the key subjects; except for an aircraft that was used as a group photo.  We can see why it was spread across two pages, but would have split it with a 5 mm gutter margin. Inexperience shows.

336 pages in 265 x 205 mm portrait format, hardcover, $55 from our shop.