When World War I began in 1914, the air forces of the opposing nations consisted of handfuls of rickety biplanes from which pilots occasionally took pot shots at one another with rifles. By the war's end, the essential blueprint of the modern fighter had emerged: it was now an efficient hugging machine that limited the average life expectancy of a front line pilot to just a few weeks. To trace the story of this astonishingly rapid technological revolution, NOVA takes viewers inside The Vintage Aviator, a New Zealand-based outfit of aviation buffs dedicated to bringing back classic World War I fighters such as the SE5A and Albatros DV. NOVA joins the team as they discover the secrets of some of aviation's most colorful and deadly early flying machines and explores how their impact played a key role in the nightmare slaughter on the Western Front.

NOVA Season 42 Episodes...

• s42e01 - Vaccines Calling the Shots
• s42e02 - Rise of the Hackers
• s42e03 - Why Planes Vanish
• s42e04 - Surviving Ebola
• s42e05 - Ben Franklin's Balloons
• s42e06 - First Air War
• s42e07 - Bigger Than T. rex
• s42e08 - Emperor's Ghost Army
• s42e09 - Killer Landslides
• s42e10 - First Man on the Moon
• s42e11 - Big Bang Machine
• s42e12 - Sunken Ship Rescue
• s42e13 - Sinkholes-Buried Alive
• s42e14 - Colosseum - Roman Death Trap
• s42e15 - Petra - Lost City of Stone
• s42e16 - Hagia Sophia: Istanbul's Ancient Mystery
• s42e17 - The Great Math Mystery
• s42e18 - Invisible Universe Revealed
• s42e19 - Nazi Attack on America
• s42e20 - Lethal Seas
• s42e21 - Chasing Pluto
• s42e22 - Nuclear Meltdown Disaster

NOVA Show Summary

Seen in more than 100 countries, NOVA is the most watched science based television series in the world and the most watched documentary series on PBS. It is also one of television's most acclaimed series, having won many major television awards, most of them many times over.