Knights of the Air

The story

When the First World War began in the summer of 1914, aircraft were seen as scouts. Their job was to watch troop movements and report back, not to fight. Crews from both sides sometimes exchanged shots with pistols and rifles, but no aircraft had yet been brought down by another in combat.

That changed on October 5, 1914, near Reims. A French Voisin III of Escadrille V 24 took off with Sergeant Joseph Frantz at the controls and Corporal Louis Quénault, his mechanic, behind a Hotchkiss machine gun. The Voisin III was a pusher, with the engine and propeller behind the crew, which left the front of the nacelle free for a gun. Over Jonchery-sur-Vesle they met a German Aviatik two-seater, whose crew was armed only with rifles. After a short fight the Aviatik went down, and both German airmen were killed. It is the first confirmed aerial victory in history.

The song opens the album at that turning point: the old world of cavalry and sabres giving way to "canvas and wire". The newspapers soon called these airmen "knights of the air", and the song uses the name while keeping its distance from the romance: "this was no joust". The chorus returns at the very end of the album, in Same Wings, New Sky, when the same pilots fly again in peacetime.

Lyrics

Verse 1Summer of fourteen, the cavalry rides,
Horses and sabres and the old world's pride.
But up in the blue, a new war is born,
Canvas and wire in the break of the morn.

Pre-ChorusNo rules for the sky, no map and no guide,
Just a man and a machine, and nowhere to hide.

ChorusKnights of the air, rise to the sky,
Canvas and wire and nothing but pride!
Knights of the air, into the blue,
Nobody's ready, but they're coming through.

Verse 2October, fourteen, near Reims,
A Voisin climbs with a gun and a dream.
Two men aloft, and a rifle's reply,
The first time a plane fell out of the sky.

Pre-ChorusNo rules for the sky, no map and no guide,
Just a man and a machine, and nowhere to hide.

ChorusKnights of the air, rise to the sky,
Canvas and wire and nothing but pride!
Knights of the air, into the blue,
Nobody's ready, but they're coming through.

Verse 3They called them knights, but this was no joust,
Open cockpits, and the cold wind's shout.
Young men with scarves, too fragile, too bold,
Flying toward glory they couldn't withhold.

BridgeYesterday horses, today the engines roar,
Nothing in the heavens was ever the same before.
Whoever you were, wherever you fell,
The sky remembers, the sky tells.

Final ChorusKnights of the air, rise to the sky,
Canvas and wire and nothing but pride!
Knights of the air, into the blue,
The old world is falling, and the new one flew.

OutroKnights of the air...