Showing titles in Military & War

During World War II, Canada trained tens of thousands of airmen under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Those selected for Bomber Command operations went on to rain devastation upon the Third Reich in the great air battles over Europe, but their losses were high. German fighters and anti-aircraft guns took a terrifying toll. The chances of surviving a tour of duty as a bomber crew were almost nil.

When the US Navy send their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six. SEAL Team Six is a clandestine unit tasked with counterterrorism, hostage rescue and counterinsurgency. Until recently its existence was a closely guarded secret. Then ST6 took down Osama bin Laden, and the operatives within it were thrust into the global spotlight. In this internationally bestselling chronicle, former ST6 shooter Howard Wasdin takes listeners deep inside the world of Navy SEALs and Special Forces snipers.

Stirringly evocative, thought provoking, and often jaw dropping, The Operator ranges across SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's awe-inspiring 400-mission career that included his involvement in attempts to rescue "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips and culminated in those famous three shots that dispatched the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. He not only survived working on the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai, but he was subsequently taken on one of the Japanese 'hellships' which was torpedoed. Nearly everyone else on board died and Urquhart spent 5 days alone on a raft in the South China Sea before being rescued by a whaling ship. He was taken to Japan and then forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later a nuclear bomb dropped just ten miles away . . .

On June 30, 2009, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl left his post in eastern Afghanistan, about 25 miles from the Pakistani border. He was quickly captured by local tribesmen, who sold him up the Taliban's chain of command. In May 2014, after almost five years in captivity - the longest held and most brutalised prisoner of war since Vietnam - he was released. Within hours, however, some of Bergdahl's former platoon mates were denouncing him as a deserter. Bergdahl admits walking away from his guard post of his own volition. But what is the truth: is Bowe Bergdahl a traitor or a hero?

Douglas MacArthur was arguably the last American public figure to be worshipped unreservedly as a national hero, the last military figure to conjure up the romantic stirrings once evoked by George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee. But he was also one of America's most divisive figures, a man whose entire career was steeped in controversy. Was he an avatar or an anachronism, a brilliant strategist or a vainglorious mountebank?

Shaun Pinner was a retired and decorated British soldier, living a peaceful and happy life in Mariupol with his Ukrainian family. What follows is the true story of his six months spent imprisoned in Russian-occupied Ukraine. After the horrors of frontline fighting, Shaun had to survive his capture by the Russian soldiers, and his removal to a Black Site - an off-the-grid prison untethered to human rights conventions - where he was subjected to a campaign of torture by Putin's secret police.

After passing the world's toughest Special Forces selection to get into D Squadron, 22 SAS, in 1979, Mark 'Splash' Aston thought he'd missed out on all the action. Too late to fight with the SAS in a decade long secret war in Oman, when terrorists then seized the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 Splash missed out again when responsibility for the counter-terror role was passed to their comrades in B Squadron just weeks earlier. Then on April 2nd 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.

One morning on the outskirts of Damascus, two starving friends were walking through their war-ravaged city. They entered a once familiar street that had now been turned to rubble - concrete bridges towered over them like tombs, and houses were turned inside out. One of them, Aeham, turned to the only comfort he had left - his piano - and composed a song of hope. It was a song that would reach beyond the rubble and bring a message of solidarity to his fellow Syrians and all those suffering the devastation of war.

This is not a straightforward memoir. Instead, it is a book that distills the processes and tactics Anthony 'Staz' Stazicker gathered throughout his career in the Special Forces—gunfights, door-kicking operations, and against-the-odds escape—and how these hard lessons informed his later successes with multi-million pound start-up clothing company ThruDark.

Flying helicopters is more dangerous than flying fixed-wing aircraft - and helicopter rescue is one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. Now, Col. Fleming takes listeners along for a bracing ride as he recounts the most thrilling episodes of his long career. With all the nail-biting excitement of a thriller, Heart of the Storm brings to life dramatic jungle rescues in the Philippines, the longest helicopter rescue mission in history to save crew members of a Ukrainian freighter 840 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, and many more.

Donald Macintyre’s U-Boat Killer is a unique account of the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of a British destroyer captain who fought through this brutal campaign. Few other books transport the listener to the deck of a convoy escort in the cold, stormy seas of the Atlantic Ocean and bring to life the terrifying conflict between the Royal Navy and the U-boats.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

GCHQ is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the UK, and has existed for 100 years - but we still know next to nothing about it. In this ground-breaking book - the first and most definitive history of the organisation ever published - intelligence expert Richard Aldrich traces GCHQ’s development from a wartime code-breaking operation based in the Bedfordshire countryside into one of the world leading espionage organisations.

After being commissioned into the US Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan flying combat search and rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge - to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy.

In 1967, at age 19, John Stillman - refusing to wait for the draft - voluntarily enlisted in the Army to aid his fellow countrymen in one of the most opposed involvements in our nation’s history: the Vietnam War. Written with John’s daughter, Lori Stillman, Jumping from Helicopters is a vivid and moving memoir that unearths 50 years of repressed memories with stunning accuracy and raw details.

Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations.

British soldier Tony McNally had a vital job in the Falklands - as a Rapier missile operator, his job was to protect the British ships and men from air attack by the fearless and desperate Argentinian pilots. His war went well when he shot down two Argentine jets - until June 8, 1982 when McNally and his Rapier system were dug in on the hillside overlooking Port Pleasant near Fitzroy, wrongly referred to as ‘Bluff Cove’, providing Air Defence cover for the RFA Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram LSL’s , as they sat waiting to off-load hundreds of soldiers.

Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet - and one of history's greatest conspiracies is born. Harro Schulze-Boysen had already shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of antifascists that stretched across Berlin's bohemian underworld.

The Lockheed SR-71, unofficially known as the Blackbird, was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed Skunk Works. The aircraft flew so fast and high that not one was ever shot down, even by a missile. SR-71 pilot and instructor Colonel Richard Graham offers a rare cockpit perspective on how regular Air Force pilots and navigators transformed themselves into SR-71 Blackbird crews, turning their unique aviation talents to account in an unprecedented way.