The Balloonist: At the Dawn of Aviation

Andrey Kireev, an officer of the Russian army, after a car accident, ends up in the past—on the eve of World War I. He studies at the Gatchina School for Military Pilots and is sent to serve in the air detachment of the Osovets fortress. Combat aviation takes its first tentative steps. Fragile early aircraft with unreliable engines are only about to become one of the most destructive branches of troops. Individual aerial skirmishes by “noble knights of the sky” with pistols will quickly be replaced by fierce battles involving dozens of aircraft with bombs and rapid-fire machine guns; engine power and aircraft speed will rise sharply. Andrey trains intensively, mastering high-level aerobatic maneuvers—the techniques that will be invented only a few years later, after years of bloody slaughter. Will a young officer manage to change the course of events, rewrite a lost war?