Military Air

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.

Valerie Andre was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1922. From an early age, she wanted to fly, but as a woman, she faced challenges. While boys could receive government-funded flight lessons, Andre had to pay for hers by tutoring. During World War II, she left Strasbourg against German prohibitions in order to study medicine in Paris, where she completed her studies under threat of arrest by the Gestapo. Assigned to an army hospital in Saigon in French Indochina in the late 1940s, Andre trained as a neurosurgeon.

Author of three books, this is by far his best. Lee puts you in the cockpit in a riveting account of life as a fighter pilot at the front. At times humorous and dramatic, this thoughtful, enlightening, true account is a classic to be ranked with Winged Victory by W. V. Yeates, also published by Grub Street.

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men vanished. In this thrilling adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing crashes and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors.

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 February 13 and 14, 1945, three successive waves of British and U.S. aircraft rained down thousands of tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on the largely undefended German city of Dresden. Night and day, Dresden was engulfed in a vast sea of flame, a firestorm that generated 1,500-degree temperatures and hurricane-force winds. Thousands suffocated in underground shelters where they had fled to escape the inferno above.

The firebombing of Tokyo. Strategic Air Command. John F. Kennedy. Dr. Strangelove. George Wallace. All of these have one man in common—General Curtis LeMay, who remains as enigmatic and controversial as he was in life. Until now. Warren Kozak traces the trajectory of America’s most infamous general, from his troubled background and heroic service in Europe to his firebombing of Tokyo, guardianship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the Cold War, frustrated career in government, and short-lived political run.

In War for the Hell of It, Cobleigh shares his perspectives in a deeply personal account of a fighter pilot's life, one filled with moral ambiguity and military absurdities offset by the undeniable thrill of flying a fighter plane. With well-crafted prose that puts you into his Phantom's cockpit, Cobleigh vividly recounts the unexplainable loss of his wingman, the useless missions he flew, the need to trust his reflexes, eyesight, aggressiveness, and his survival instincts in the heat of combat.

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 most prolific and influential literary figures of his generation, wrote Bombs Away, a nonfiction account of his experiences with US Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II. Now, for the first time since its original publication in 1942, Penguin Classics presents this exclusive edition of Steinbeck's introduction to the then-nascent US Army Air Force and its bomber crew.

Graham Pitchfork has built on these reminiscences to trace the roles of Beaufighter squadrons spread across all the theaters of World War Two operations. From home bases, through north-west Europe, North Africa, Malta, and the Mediterranean to the far Far East and south-west Pacific, the Beaufighter served far and wide as did the crews of the RAF, RAAF, SAAF, and New Zealand and Canadian squadrons. All are covered in this quite unique book to be savored by all those interested in the war in the air from 1939-1945.

David Burnett takes listeners into a unique world of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. His journey starts in a conventional army unit where he feels unfulfilled. This lack of fulfillment drives David to pursue his dream of becoming an MH-47G Chinook helicopter crew chief in the best and most secretive aviation unit in the world. David faces hurdles and set backs trying to achieve, but he is more determined than ever. He is trained and ready to deploy with the 160th, and it is nothing short of intense.

Sometimes you do everything right, but it just isn't your day. A part fails and your helicopter comes apart in flight, or, another aircraft runs into you and the pieces of both fall to the ground below, or the enemy gunner pulls the trigger at just the right moment and his rounds find your aircraft in exactly the right spot to take it out of the sky. Whichever way it happens, it wasn't your day.

Listen to this captivating memoir by Wilhelm Johnen who flew his first operational mission in July 1941, having completed his blind-flying training. In his first couple of years he brought down two enemy planes. The tally went up rapidly once the air war was escalated in spring 1943, when Air Marshal Arthur Harris of the RAF Bomber Command began the campaign dubbed the Battle of the Ruhr.

Spitfire first became a household word during the Blitz, but it was not the first service the valiant aircraft had performed. At Dunkirk a year earlier, pilots had provided aerial support as the allied forces began their evacuation from France. In an attempt to answer the questions of the man on the street, Brian Lane, who wrote under the pseudonym of B. J. Ellan, tells of what it is that a fighter pilot thinks and feels when he is fighting in the skies, from the sunlit coast of Belgium to the lovely countryside of Kent.

Sharkey Ward commanded 801 Naval Air Squadron, HMS Invincible, was senior Sea Harrier adviser to the Command, flew over 60 missions and was awarded DSC. Yet had he followed all his instructions to the letter, Britain might well have lost the Falklands War. His dramatic first-hand story of the air war in the South Atlantic is also an extraordinary, outspoken account of inter-service rivalries, bureaucratic interference and dangerous ignorance of the realities of air combat among many senior commanders.

The first operational military jet in the world, toward the end of the Second World War, the Me 262 was to be the German "miracle weapon". Mano Ziegler was involved from its inception and contributed to the design, testing, training, and even served in it operationally. Could the Me 262 have broken the Allied supremacy in the air? Hitler's Jet Plane fills an important gap in the history of the Luftwaffe and of aviation in general with new research which discloses how the first military jet plane failed to make its mark on World War II.

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 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.

A daredevil pilot in the famed 352nd Fighter Squadron, the author of this remarkable memoir bailed out of his burning Mustang two days after D-Day and was launched on a thrilling adventure on the ground in Occupied France.

Luke, for good reason, has very strong walls built around him, and Stella is a woman who doesn't need a man to make her complete. But it seems like Saint, her K-9 sidekick, understands something these two 'humans' aren't - or are refusing to admit to each other. Tense moments and dramatic events unfold in this in this modern day Adventure-Romance, and the funny yet tender story will emote visceral feelings of excitement, anticipation, and several moments of "I did not see that coming."