WINGS OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER. PIONEER MILITARY AVIATION IN THE BIG BEND

Austin: University of Texas Press, [1984]., 1984. First edition. First edition. 8vo. Cloth, titles stamped in gilt on the spine, xxv [3], 266 pp., preface, introduction, prologue, illustrated from photographs, epilogue, footnotes, bibliography, index. Little-known and interesting history of America’s earliest military aviation efforts in Texas’s Big Bend region and from a remote airfield in the rugged reaches of the southwestern Texas borderlands. "Against a backdrop of revolution, border banditry, freewheeling aerial dramatics, and World War II comes this compelling look at the rise of U.S. combat aviation at an unlikely proving ground ... a remote airfield in the rugged reaches of the southwestern Texas borderlands. Here, at Elmo Johnson's Big Bend ranch, hundreds of young Army Air Corps pilots demonstrated the U.S. military's reconnaissance and emergency response capabilities and, in so doing, dramatized the changing role of the airplane as an instrument of war and peace. Kenneth Ragsdale's gripping account not only sets the United States squarely in the forefront of aerial development but also provides a reflective look at U.S.-Mexican relations of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, particularly the tense days and aftermath of the Escobar Rebellion of 1929." As new, unread copy in dust jacket.