Air History Military

This story is a chronicle of the year 1968 as seen through the eyes of the author while serving at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand, supporting the air war in Vietnam. It was an odd juxtaposition, repairing the fire-control systems on F-105s that were making twice-daily bombing runs over North Vietnam, while living in relative comfort and safety.

Ghostriders: Mors De Caelis is a comprehensive history of AC-130 gunship combat operations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The story begins with the first AC-130 in 1968, and ends in 1975 at the end of the war in Vietnam. It tells the life and death stories of Spectre crews, who faced extreme danger while hunting trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and providing fire support for US and allied ground forces.

In Harrier Boys, Volume One: Cold War Through the Falklands, 1969-1990, Robert Marston, who flew Harriers for many years, draws together accounts from others who worked with this unique jet through its history. The excitement, camaraderie, and pride of Harrier operators shine through in the personal stories of those whose lives were changed by their experience of this iconic aircraft, both on land and at sea.

Alone, unprepared, and weak. These are generally the words used to describe Britain's position in 1940, part of a narrative that has been built up ever since the end of World War II. However, the reality is very different. On land, sea, and in the air, Britain was prepared. It had the most powerful navy in the world; the RAF was relatively strong, but more importantly, was operating as part of a plan and a joined-up group system that was in reality never in any real danger of being defeated; even the post-Dunkirk British Army was better armed than the post-war narrative tells us.

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe in Uganda - ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening. Days later, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers assaulted the airport terminal, killed all the terrorists, and rescued all the hostages but three who were killed in the crossfire. The assault force suffered just one fatality.

Through the firsthand experiences of pilots and ground crew, the author of Javelin Boys chronicles the history of the RAF’s first jet-engine aircraft. As Britain’s first jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor has had a remarkably varied and lengthy life. But while many books have focused on its development and service history, the time has come to hear the personal experiences of its air and ground crews.

On August 7, 1942, two events of major military importance occurred on separate sides of the planet. In the South Pacific, the United States went on the offensive, landing the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal. In England, 12 B-17 bombers of the new Eighth Air Force’s 97th Bombardment Group bombed the Rouen–Sotteville railroad marshalling yards in France. While the mission was small, the aerial struggle that began that day would ultimately cost the United States more men killed and wounded by the end of the war in Europe than the Marines would lose in the Pacific War.

The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.

Nichol tells the remarkable tale of how the ejection seat was first conceived during the Second World War as countless lives were lost in accidents and in battle. In the wake of the war, that technological race to save aircrew lives using explosive seats continued at an incredible pace. Nichol tells the story of the brave men who risked their lives testing those early devices, and interviewed the first British pilot to eject back in 1949, when ejection, from pulling the handle to being under the parachute, took thirty seconds. Today, that figure is down to around one second.

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.

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.

America’s most decorated warship of World War II, Enterprise was constantly engaged against the Japanese Empire, earning the title “the fightingest ship” in the navy. Her career was eventful, vital, and short. Commissioned in 1938, her bombers sank a submarine just ten days after the Pearl Harbor attack, claiming the first Japanese vessel lost in the war.

Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front. With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men. The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid.

Civil Air Transport (CAT), founded in China after World War II by Claire Chennault and Whiting Willauer, was initially a commercial carrier specializing in air freight. Its role quickly changed as CAT became first a paramilitary adjunct of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, then the CIA's secret "air force" in Korea, then "the most shot-at airline in the world" in French Indochina, and eventually becoming reorganized as Air America at the height of the Vietnam War.

Acclaimed author Andrei Cherny tells the gripping saga of a rag-tag band of Americans - with limited resources and little hope for success - keeping West Berliners alive in the face of Soviet tyranny, winning the hearts and minds of former enemies, and giving the world a shining example of fundamental goodness.

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.

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

For more than three decades, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy’s premier carrier-based, multirole fighter jet. From its harrowing combat missions over Libya to its appearance on the silver screen in movies like Top Gun and Executive Decision, the F-14 has become an icon of American air power. Now, for the first time in a single volume, Tomcat Fury explores the illustrious combat history of the F-14, from the Gulf of Sidra to the Iran-Iraq War to the skies over Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror.

Tornado Boys is the latest in the ever-popular Boys series and differs from earlier titles. With the introduction of female pilots to the RAF in 1994, the Tornado was the first aircraft to be flown by both men and women. This is acknowledged in the book with a chapter written by one female pilot. Another aspect that makes this book different from the rest of the series is that it covers an aircraft which is still in active service, especially as a key player in current Middle East operations.

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....