Volume 8 of the Air Power and the Arab World, 1909-1955 mini-series continues the story of the men and machines involved in the first half century of military aviation in the Arab world. These years opened with the Arab countries and their military forces still caught up in the final years of the Second World War. This was followed by a brief period of soaring hopes and often unrealistic ambitions. Meanwhile, the crisis in Palestine was deepening. During the immediate post-war years Arab popular opinion grew increasingly angry, fearing that the Zionist settler community was determined to establish a specifically Jewish state in Palestine at the expense of the indigenous Arab population. Furthermore, it was also becoming clear that the so-called Great Powers which dominated the newly established United Nations Organization were unlikely to stand in the way. Following the Second World War, French influence in the Middle East had collapsed, though this was not as yet the case in North Africa. American influence was growing in the region, though the USA was emerging as pro-Zionist in its policy. The Soviet Union, though nominally also pro-Zionist, still remained a distant and largely insignificant player in Middle Eastern affairs; its only interest being to cause problems for its "Western Power" rivals. This left the British almost literally holding the ring as the dominant imperial power in the Arab Middle East, both in military and political terms. At the same time the British government, the British military establishment and indeed the British public, were showing themselves to be desperately eager to get rid of what was perceived as the burden of the Palestine Problem. AUTHORS: David Nicolle is a leading expert on the history of medieval warfare, in particular the Crusades and Middle Eastern warfare, and he is a prolific writer of books on these subjects as well as articles and magazine articles. Among his many previous works are The Hundred Years War; The Mongol Warlords;Saladin and the Saracens; The Crusades; The Medieval Warfare Sourcebook; Hattin 1187 and Fighting for the Faith. Late Air Vice Marshal Gabr Ali Gabr PhD (EAF, ret.) served as the pilot of a De Havilland Vampire fighter jet during the Suez War, 1956. After concluding higher military education at the Air Warfare Institute in 1960, he served as an instructor in air tactics at the Air Warfare Institute in 1962-64. Between 1966-67, he was a staff officer during the June 1967 War and went on to be chief of the Operational Training Branch in 1968-73; he was also chief of of the Operations Group during the October 1973 War with Israel. After serving as an instructor in the art of operations and as the chief air force chair at High War College from 1977 until 1982, he received his PhD at Nasser High Academy in 1989. He then moved into writing and has since published seven books and dozens of studies and articles on the history of air warfare in Egypt and abroad.
