GHOSTS OF THE SKIES
AVIATION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Representing eight years of Philip Makanna's best color photographs are 117 brilliant color prints interwoven with 66 extraordinary archival duotones from the war and a text drawn from the historic words of the time. This is surely one of the finest collections of aviation photographs ever assembled.

The original GHOSTS book, still available in limited quantities. This is the classic GHOSTS WWII book, a timeless, essential edition to the library of any aviation of history enthusiast. 

160 pages, hardbound, 11 1/2" by 11 1/2", Published in 1995.

REVIEW: From AMERICAN HERITAGE MAGAZINE

GHOSTS of the Skies: Aviation in the Second World War by Philip Makanna, GHOSTS, 160 pages.

Earth, Water, Air and Fire

Charles Robbins writes in his preface to this luminous book of World War II airplanes in flight, “We have precious little to memorialize the war: several restored aircraft, a clutch of words from those who fought, and a few images from the past and the present.” GHOSTS of the Skies makes the most of these. The photographer Philip Makanna was born in the year of the Battle of Britain, and everything he later heard made him want to become a pilot. His poor eyesight held him back, but his passionate dream shows in his elegant shots of Mustangs, Spitfires, and Helldivers aloft, sometimes on their final journeys. His P-51 floating in pale light looks like hammered sculpture.

Makanna has been tracking down old planes around the world and shooting them for almost four decades. He names the book’s sections for the ancient elements—earth, water, air, and fire—proceeding from the conflict’s landborne beginnings to its fireball end. Among his brightly modern pictures he has set period photographs and quotations from the principals. Toward the end he combines a contemporary shot of a Zero fighter over a peaceful beach with a kamikaze pilot’s final poem to his mother: “My soul will have its home in the rising of the sun. If you feel sad, look at the dawn with all of its beauty. You will find me there.” The layperson will savor these sensuous, evocative pictures as much as the flight buff.