The Royal Air Force is synonymous with its heroic achievements in the summer of 1940, when Winston Churchill's "famous few"--the Hurricane and Spitfire pilots of RAF Fighter Command--held Göering's Luftwaffe at bay in the Battle of Britain, thereby changing the course of the war. For much of the 20th century, warplanes were fixed in the world's imagination, a symbol of the perils and excitements of the modern era. But within the space of 100 years,...