Showing titles in Air Forces

This is the story of a pilot who flew the F-4, the F-105, the F-111, and the O-2 in defense of his country. In addition, he spent several years working on the ground with Army frontline forces as an air liaison officer, integrating airpower into the ground battle. Many people have asked what it feels like to fly jet fighters. In fact, most people have never flown in a small plane. With no relevant reference, it’s very hard to describe. They truly are missing the most incredible feeling of being airborne alone, among the clouds, looking down at the ground and feeling amazingly free.

Wayne K. Blickenstaff, known as "Blick," was a stalwart of the 350th Fighter Squadron of the 353rd Fighter Group based at Goxhill, Metfield, and Raydon, England, as part of the Eighth Air Force prosecuting the strategic air campaign against Germany. As an original cadre member, he rose steadily through the ranks to a Lieutenant Colonel and Group Operations Officer. His double "ace" status included a Me262 jet fighter and the destruction of five aircraft in one mission—giving him rare "ace in a day" status.

He had to sit in a segregated rail car on the journey to army basic training in Mississippi in 1943. But two years later, the 20-year-old African American from New York was at the controls of a P-51, prowling for Luftwaffe aircraft at 5,000 feet over the Austrian countryside. This is the remarkable true story of Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr., one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. Award-winning aviation writer Philip Handleman re-creates the harrowing action and heart-pounding drama of Stewart's combat missions....

Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and endured both the Nazi occupation and the brutal Russian liberation. He joined the Czech Air Force, rising to captain by the age of 21. When he could no longer tolerate life under the Communists, he hijacked an airliner and flew across the Iron Curtain to freedom. He outlasted communism, and when it collapsed in 1990, he returned to his home, only to realize his true home was and always would be the US.

There were no mission limits for a pilot in the Pacific during World War II; unlike in Europe, you flew until it was time to go home. So it was for James "Jug" Curran, all the way from New Guinea to the Philippines with the 348th Fighter Group, the first P-47 Thunderbolt outfit in the Pacific. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Curran volunteered to try flying in the blue yonder and trained as an Army fighter pilot. He got his wish to fly the P-47 in the Pacific, going into combat in August 1943, in New Guinea, and later helping start the "Black Rams" fighter squadron.

Experience the sights, smells, and sounds of the Cobra, hanging on tight as you’re hurled into the chaos of night combat operations. Step through an otherwise closed door and explore the emotions, physical danger, and successes that would shape a generation of aviators.

Drop into one man's world of transport flying at the height of the Vietnam War and experience the good, the bad, and the ugly - with character and compassion. Humorous, compassionate, and tragic day-to-day experiences of a transport pilot in combat. When Jon Drury was shipped to Vietnam with 90 percent of his graduating class, he was assigned to the short field C-7A Caribou made by De Havilland. His challenging mission: carry troops into combat, air drop live chickens in crates, ferry cows to Special Forces camps, and dodge .50 caliber fire.

The fifth book in this series recounts the nostalgic and moving history of fighting in the skies during World War II, from every fighting air force on both sides of the Atlantic, and the stories of the men and machines that made those forces great. It follows the development of military aircraft - the RAF and the USAF - from fighters to the big bombers that ruled our skies during World War II from the Battle of Britain to the atom bomb.

The 1930s still conjure painful images: the great want of the Depression, and overseas, the self-appointed national saviors dressing up old hatreds as new ideas. But there was another story that embodied mankind in that decade. The 1933 World’s Fair looked to the future, unabashedly, as one full of glowing promise, and no technology loomed larger at the Fair than aviation. It was only later in the decade that the dark correlation between the rise of some of aviation’s superstars and the rise of fascism was to be revealed.

World War I, also known in its time as the Great War or the War to End all Wars, was an unprecedented conflict in terms of its sheer scale. Before 1914, flying machines were objects of public curiosity. By 1918, all the major belligerents were fielding squadrons of fighting aircraft. Bombs were dropped on Paris in August 1914, and Zeppelins bombed Belgian forces as the Germans advanced on Liège. Zeppelin raids on Britain would continue for nearly four years. These raids and the attempts to stop them would be carried out at the cutting edge of new technology.

In 1972, America was completing its withdrawal from the long and divisive war in Vietnam. Air power covered the departure of ground forces, and search and rescue teams from all services and Air America covered the airmen and soldiers still in the fight. Day and night these military and civilian aircrews stood alert to respond to "Mayday" calls. The rescue forces were the answer to every man's prayer, and those forces brought home airmen, sailors, marines, and soldiers downed or trapped across the breadth and depth of the entire Southeast Asia theater.

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. It was Wade McClusky who remained calm when the Japanese fleet was not where it was expected to be. It was he who made the counterintuitive choice to then search to the north instead of to the south.

Flight of the Forgotten is the true story of one of the most closely-guarded American military secrets of all time. It is intriguing, controversial, and thought-provoking. The story traverses 50 years, two generations, and the realities of our physical world. The triggering event is the tragic loss of an American Eighth Air Force bomber crew in 1945 under mysterious circumstances while enroute home after the end of World War II. The loss represents a 50-year-old aviation mystery, officially "forgotten" by the United States Government.

George Thenault’s The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille was published in 1921. These pilots were fighting at the beginning of military aviation. Thenault’s account covers all aspects of this squadron in World War One, from their activities on the ground to battles in the air.

One of the great bomber pilots of World War II recalls his various missions over the European theater, from bombing heavy water installations in Norway to the raid that nearly wiped out German ball bearing production. The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

The airplane changed the course of history. Above all, it changed the history of the United States. When the Wright brothers invented their flying machine, Americans lived in a nation of two dimensions, circumscribed by lines drawn on a conventional map. A century later, their nation existed - in fact, reigned - in three dimensions. Two million Americans slipped the surly bonds of earth daily, carried aloft by aircraft operating in every part of the world.

Since the Wright brothers made their famed flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, aviation has emerged as the indispensable arm of American military power. In this detailed and informative history, Charles J. Gross traces its development from the technological antecedents of the Wright brothers' triumph through the air war for Kosovo. Drawing on examples from all periods and all service branches, he explains the roles of politics, economics, and technology in shaping air power in the US armed forces and assesses the actual impact of military aviation.

In Barren SEAD, award-winning historian James L. Young, Jr., propagates a different theory: Instead of being a sign of what the Air Force was capable of, Linebacker II was a bitter failure that starkly outlined the USAF's limitations. Furthermore, instead of the meddling of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, this defeat was brought about by Air Force leaders' refusal to develop a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) doctrine from 1953-1972.

Unmanned is an in-depth examination of why seemingly successful wars never seem to end. The problem centers on drones, now accumulated in the thousands, the front end of a spying and killing machine that is disconnected from either security or safety. Drones, however, are only part of the problem. William Arkin shows that security is actually undermined by an impulse to gather as much data as possible, the appetite and the theory both skewed toward the notion that no amount is too much.

In late May 1927 an inexperienced and unassuming 25-year-old Air Mail pilot from rural Minnesota stunned the world by making the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A spectacular feat of individual daring and collective technological accomplishment, Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris ushered in America's age of commercial aviation.