Showing titles in Air Forces

On the morning of October 24, 1944, in the Sibuyan Sea amidst the Philippine Islands, VT-18, a close-knit squadron of six young American torpedo bomber pilots, departed the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid on a search and destroy mission. Their target: the super-battleship Musashi, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The pilots were tasked with preventing the immense enemy warship and the huge naval armada of which she was a part from inflicting unspeakable damage.

While Pilot Officer Geoffrey Myers was caught up in the Battle of Britain, his French wife and two half-Jewish children were trapped in increasingly dangerous circumstances in Nazi-occupied France. In intimate, frank, and powerful letters, Myers kept a record of his war, his deep love for his...

To be an airman in the Eighth Air Force flying over the war-torn skies of Europe required skill, tenacity, and luck. Those who were shot down and evaded capture needed all of that and more if they were to make it back to friendly lines. These are their stories. Each is compiled from the original intelligence debrief written by the pilots or aircrew themselves. Bill Yenne details how a spider web of escape routes sprang up, created by the local Résistance.

As a young band of brothers flies over German-occupied France, they come under heavy fire. Their B-17 is shot down and the airmen - stumbling through fields and villages - scatter across Europe. Some struggled to flee for safety. Others were captured immediately and imprisoned. Now, for the first time, their incredible story of grit, survival, and reunion is told. Join George as he retraces his steps to freedom and discover the amazing stories of sacrifice and survival and how 10 young American boys plus their French helpers became heroes.

Since he was a young boy, Joe Balzer dreamed of flying. He pursued his goal with passion and earned his pilot licenses, piling up hours of flight time with a wide variety of planes and jets with one overarching goal: to one day fly for a major airline. But Joe had a problem. He was an alcoholic and refused to admit to himself that he had a problem. His alcoholism caught up with him in March 1990, when Joe was arrested with two other pilots for flying a commercial airliner while under the influence of alcohol.

The best way for today's sailors to learn about a battle is from those who fought it. The Battle of Midway, commemorated annually in the US Navy, warrants close attention. This Naval Institute guide includes some of the most vibrant and informed accounts by individuals who fought on both sides of the June 1942 battle. The anthology pulls together memoirs, articles, excerpts from other Naval Institute books, and relevant government documents to help listeners understand what happened and explain why the battle was so significant to the naval service.

During Vietnam, the basic role of the USMC gunship squadrons was to protect the transport helicopters during medevac missions, troop insertions and extractions, resupply missions, and supporting the Marines on the ground during operations and patrols. Basically, whenever the Marines or South Vietnam friendlies got in trouble the gunships were dispatched to assist them.

Battle fatigue...shell shock...PTSD... terminology changes. The pain remains. Paul Eastman, a small-town Wisconsin boy turned P-40 fighter pilot, lands in the jungles of Assam and Burma in 1943. Lt. Eastman's compelling story, gleaned from his diary and letters home and illustrated with his personal photos, provides unique insights into the realities of combat life and death, punctuated by love and concern for the wife he left behind.

Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong. Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945.

The second book in this series follows the history of the "Guinea Pig Club". Founded by the brilliant plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe, this is probably the most exclusive club in the world, and one no one would want to join given the chance. McIndoe directed operations, re-constructing his patients and inspired them to rebuild their own lives.

This book brings you the previously untold firsthand accounts of combat and brotherhood, of captivity and redemption, and the aftermath of a war that left no American community unscathed.

At the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small upstate New York community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front. Seventy years later, a history teacher tracks down the veterans with a connection to “Hometown, USA” who fought the war in the air over Europe, men who were tempered in the tough times of the Great Depression and forged in battle.

In Marshall's Great Captain, author Kathy Wilson details Andrews's extraordinary life and career. The first biography dedicated to the namesake of Joint Base Andrews, this book sheds a light on Andrews's crucial role in orchestrating US involvement in WWII, as well as the professional relationship between Andrews and Marshall. Wilson raises Andrews's legacy to its legitimate place within the annals of both air power and WWII history and posits that there is a high probability that Andrews was Marshall's first choice for the office of Supreme Allied Commander.

A riveting Vietnam War story--and one of the most dramatic in aviation history--told by a New York Times bestselling author and a prominent aviation historian Every war has its "bridge"--Old North Bridge at Concord, Burnside's Bridge at Antietam, the railway bridge over Burma's River Kwai, the...

A hell-bent-for-leather fighter pilot, Elwyn G. Righetti remains one of the most unknown, yet compelling, colorful, and controversial commanders of World War II. Arriving late to the war, he led the England-based 55th Fighter Group against the Nazis during the closing months of the fight with a no-holds-barred aggressiveness that transformed the group from a middling organization of no reputation into a headline-grabbing team that had to make excuses to no one. Indeed, Righetti's boldness paid off as he quickly achieved ace status.

Concealed deep within China's inland borders is one of the most secret airplanes ever flown, known as Devil Dragon. She's sleek, unbelievably fast, and mysterious - her test pilots have one mission in mind: make her test flights successful for operational use as soon as possible. Or sooner. But when strange transmissions of pilots are recorded without an aircraft appearing on radar and bizarre cell phone signals are detected at towers hundreds of miles apart, Ford Stevens is asked to take on the most dangerous assignment of his life.

A pilot of calculated courage, "Trap" entered the Navy when test pilots were more like stuntmen than engineers. Airplanes had not yet come into their own as weapons of war, and they had an undeveloped role in the fleet. His vision and leadership shaped the evolution of naval aviation through its formative years and beyond. When the threat of war in 1940 raised an alarm over the Navy's deficiency in aircraft - especially fighters - Trap was appointed to lead the Flight Test Section to direct the development of all-new Navy airplanes.

The story of the man who won the battle of Midway and avenged Pearl Harbor for the United States. During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, US Navy dive bomber pilot Wade McClusky proved himself to be one of the greatest pilots and combat leaders in American history, but his story has never been told - until now.

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America's great twentieth-century writers A Penguin Classic On the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath and at the height of the American war effort John Steinbeck, one of the...

With the epic blockbuster film Dunkirk, to be released in July, 2017, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring, amongst others, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, and Mark Rylance, this reissue has never been more timely. "Where is the RAF?" was the oft-quoted question asked by soldiers waiting on the beach at Dunkirk, to where they had retreated following the German blitzkrieg through northern France, and where they were now being pounded by the Luftwaffe. The air forces were there, as Norman Franks proves, detailing the outstanding achievements of the Allied pilots.