In From the Flight Deck, the exhilarating and always dangerous world of aircraft carrier aviation is covered in thirty-two excerpts of the best fiction and nonfiction writing on the subject. Beginning with the first success in 1910 by American aviator Eugene Ely, the anthology then covers British operations during World War I and the unique contributions to carrier warfare made by the U.S. and British navies during the 1920s and 1930s. World War II and the Korean War are also well represented - with excerpts from such American classics as Walter Lord's Day of Infamy, Ted Lawson's Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and James A. Michener's The Bridges of Toko Ri - as the period during which carriers and their crews matured into the indispensable weapon systems we nearly take for granted today. Experiments with larger and more capable aircraft, as well as advances in a vast array of carrier-related technology, bring the reader to the present day, with selections by such noted authors as Norman Polmar (Aircraft Carriers) and George Wilson (Supercarrier). The diverse experiences of U.S. and foreign naval aviators in the Suez Operation in 1956, the French and American wars in Vietnam, the Falkla