Film Sleuth Wins National Book Award With "War Wings"

Jan. 4, 2012 - PRLog -- PMS Press is pleased to announce that author Phillip W. Stewart was recently awarded the 2011 Stars and Flags Book Award gold medal for the Technical Reference category with his landmark work, "War Wings: Films of the First Air War." Mr. Stewart has done years of extensive research to chronicle over 2,550 individual scenes of World War I aviation motion picture action from documentary films held in the National Archives and Records Administration, so that others can easily find them. His book tells researchers, educators, and historians exactly where to find specific aviation related footage. It is a “must have” for World War I aviation enthusiasts.

An annual national contest, the Stars and Flags Book Awards program was established four years ago with the purpose of promoting books having a connection to the military. Many of the judges are veterans themselves, including historians, teachers, and avid readers. The program is under the reigns of Nancy Smith of Reeds Spring, MO, owner of starsandflags.com, whose main goal is to support and promote American veterans.

A retired USAF officer, aviation film consultant and TV producer, Mr. Stewart spent over 20 years reviewing hundreds of rare WWI films, isolating and then describing the resulting 71 with aviation content. "War Wings" details thousands of individual aviation related scenes while hundreds more are summarized. Unique views of pilot training, airplane manufacturing, fighting in the skies over France, and post-Armistice testing of enemy airplanes, were all captured on film during 1917-1919. This well-researched book is a boon to scholars, librarians, and museum curators.

"War Wings: Films of the First Air War" (ISBN 978-0-9793243-3-8; $29.95 hard back; PMS Press; 235 pages) is one of five books in Mr. Stewart's Historic Footage Project. Much more information is available at the author's website, www.pwstewart.com. All of Mr. Stewart's books are available from Amazon.com and other online book sources.