Air History Military

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.

Michel Paradis’ Last Mission to Tokyo, a “superb” (The Wall Street Journal) and “engrossing...richly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) account of a key but underreported moment in World War II: The Doolittle Raids and the international war crimes trial in 1945 that defined the Japanese American relations and changed legal history.

Every war has its "bridge" - Old North Bridge at Concord, Burnside's Bridge at Antietam, the railway bridge over Burma's River Kwai, the bridge over Germany's Rhine River at Remagen, and the bridges over Korea's Toko Ri. In Vietnam it was the bridge at Thanh Hoa, called Dragon's Jaw. For seven long years hundreds of young US airmen flew sortie after sortie against North Vietnam's formidable and strategically important bridge, dodging a heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire and enemy MiG planes. Many American airmen were shot down, killed, or captured....

They were all volunteers, for a specialized duty that their own government projected would have a 50 percent casualty rate. None faltered. In every major European invasion of the war they led the way. They landed their gliders ahead of the troops who stormed Omaha Beach, and sometimes miles ahead of the paratroopers bound for the far side of the Rhine River in Germany itself. From there, they had to hold their positions. They delivered medical teams, supplies and gasoline to troops surrounded in the Battle of the Bulge, ahead even of Patton's famous supply truck convoy.

In May 1943, Guy Gibson led 617 Squadron on an audacious assault on the dams of the Ruhr valley using Barnes Wallis' ingenious 'bouncing bombs.' What happened to RAF 617 Squadron after the completion of Operation Chastise? The raid had been a success, but the bombing offensive against Nazi-occupied territories did not let up and 617 Squadron continued to be at the heart of these operations.

In 1940 Pearl Harbor had not yet happened, and America was not yet at war with Japan. But China had been trying to stave off Japanese aggression for three years - and was desperate for aircraft and trained combat pilots. General Chiang Kai-shek sent military aviation advisor Claire Chennault to Washington, where President Roosevelt was sympathetic but knew he could not intervene overtly. Instead he quietly helped Chennault put together a group of American volunteer pilots.

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.

On an August morning in England in 1943, a group of American airmen were told that before the day was out they would deliver the blow that would win the war. Flying the legendary B-17 Flying Fortress, their mission was to destroy the industrial facilities that kept the Nazi war machine in business-Schweinfurt's ball-bearing factories. But a determined and ferocious defense awaited the bomber crews of the USAAF's Mighty Eighth. Somehow, navigator Elmer Bendiner and his crew survived, their faithful B-17, Tondelayo, carrying them home. Hundreds of their young compatriots did not.

The theme of this book is the exploration of the theory and practice of dive-bombing, which tactic proved more precise than that of level-flight bombers and more effective than air-launched torpedo attacks against surface ships. It is also the author's purpose to come to a more general conclusion as to the effectiveness of dive-bombing under actual combat conditions. In this regard the words and observations of several dive-bomber aviators have been incorporated.

The flight of Apollo 11 was a triumph of human endeavor, persistence, and technology, one of the greatest achievements in human history. This book begins with the mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to the moon, then follows American spaceflight through the harrowing rescue of Apollo 13 before moving on to the successful joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

This first audiobook of sea stories encompasses the brutal experiences of Marine Corps Boot Camp, the exotic ports of call in Asia, combat in Viet Nam, and the rigors of Marine Officer Candidate School. The author weaves the sea stories into a journey that put the listener in the moment, and allows for discovery of what it means to be a United States Marine. During the journey, the sea stories unveil a young man, like many born in the 1940s, who faced that period in their lives when the expectations of family and friends didn't match those of the individuals.

From historian and columnist in Leatherneck and Armor magazines, this is the exciting, personal account of a marine fighter squadron in the South Pacific during the critical days of 1943, when the tide turned against the Japanese. Based on individual interviews and wartime documents, this is a thrilling narrative of the marines who lived, and died, during the toughest battles of the entire war.

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.

Created during the Second World War, the SAS was a small band of men brought together in the North African desert. They were the toughest and brightest of their cohort, the most resilient, most capable in close combat and most careful in surveillance. Winning approval for this radical new form of warfare was no small feat, but eventually it was achieved. The SAS was born, their mission to take on small-scale but often devastating raids and risks behind enemy lines. Levine tours us through the wartime experience, taking us behind the scenes through exclusive access to SAS archives.

On February 15, 1991, Captain Steve Phillis was leading his wingman, Lieutenant Rob Sweet, on their 30th combat mission of Desert Storm flying the A-10 Warthog. They were tasked with attacking Iraq's vaunted Medina Division of the Republican Guards - by far their most dangerous mission of the war. Near the end of their attacks, Rob was forced to eject from his aircraft and began a five-minute parachute ride down to the troops he and Steve had just finished bombing. Steve immediately sprang into action to save the life of his wingman.

This second book of Sea Stories continues to follow the journey of a young Midwesterner, now Marine Lieutenant, through the rigors of Naval Flight School in Pensacola, Fatherhood, and Combat as a Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam. It also provides an interesting look at his fellow pilots and crewmen, as they fight their war from under a helicopter rotorhead.

Angels in the Sky is the gripping story of how an all-volunteer air force helped defeat five Arab nations and protect the fledgling Jewish state. It is the exhilarating account of a ragtag band of volunteer airmen from around the world who fought for Israel during the war of independence. They arrived from America, Canada, Britain, France, and South Africa. Almost all were World War II combat veterans. Many, but not all, were Jewish, and many knowingly violated their nations' embargoes on the shipment of arms and aircraft to Israel.

According to a recent international study, the Lightning is the fifth most popular military aircraft of all time. It has many thousands of devotees who are a ready market for this timely and entertaining book which, with over 20 individual stories from former Lightning pilots, relates the highs and lows, and the dramas and the demands of those who operated this iconic aircraft from the sharp end.

In this book, historian Robert C. Stern analyzes the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first major fleet engagement where the warships were never in sight of each other. Unlike the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Coral Sea has received remarkably little study. Stern covers not only the action of the ships and their air groups but also describes the impact of this pivotal engagement.

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.