Military Aviation

On the night of July 4, 1943, transport aircraft Liberator AL523 took off from Gibraltar's North Front tarmac and within moments crashed into the sea with only one survivor, the pilot. The commander-in-chief of the Polish army and prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, was dead. Rumors as to the cause of the crash abounded. Was it pilot error? Was it, as officially classified, merely an accident, or was it, as the authors conclude in this riveting and meticulous study, an act of sabotage?

Enemy raiders are bombing Britain's cities relentlessly. Casualties are high and morale is at an all-time low. Jox McNabb and the rest of No.111 Squadron train to become night fighters to take on the raiders inflicting such carnage on Britain's cities. But then tragedy strikes and Jox is devastated by the loss of those close to him.

Air Force Reserve Major Ford Stevens is a veteran military pilot, upholding the prestigious family practice of service to the nation in the face of danger. His younger brother, Charlie, a fresh lieutenant out of pilot training, joins the family tradition seeking to prove himself. With the rivalry still strong, all he wanted to do was follow his big brother's footsteps. Now, Charlie joins his brother Ford in the same flying squadron, both men putting their lives on the line each time they strap in the jet, whether in peace or war.

In a hidden base in China, Lieutenant General He Chen licks his wounds. The Devil Dragon project lies in ruins, thanks to the heroics of US Air Force Reserve Captain Ford Stevens and Stevens's best friend, pilot Wu Lee. But now Lee is gone, and as Stevens mourns the loss of his friend, Chen works to complete his second spy plane, codenamed Black Scorpion.

Militaries need fast and powerful machines in the air. Fighter jets, cargo planes, and other amazing aircraft zoom over land and water to get the job done!

U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is a central character in the movie Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks. In his classic 1970 memoir, Powers reveals the full story behind what happened in the most sensational espionage case in Cold War history. After his U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down, Powers was captured on May 1, 1960 and endured 61 days of rigorous interrogation by the KGB, a public trial, a conviction for espionage, and the start of a 10-year sentence.

Great Britain, summer 1940. The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Adolf Hitler’s powerful armies control Europe. England stands alone against this juggernaut, the whole world knowing it is only a matter of time before Nazi Germany unleashes its military might on the island nation. And in London, a new prime minister named Winston Churchill is determined to defeat the Nazi menace, no matter the costs. Luckily for Churchill, one quirky Englishman has seen the future.

The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of eight young Americans who joined Britain's Royal Air Force, defying their country's neutrality laws and risking their U.S. citizenship to fight side-by-side with England's finest pilots in the summer of 1940—over a year before America entered the war. Flying the lethal and elegant Spitfire, they became "knights of the air" and with minimal training but plenty of guts, they dueled the skilled and fearsome pilots of Germany's Luftwaffe. By October 1940, they had helped England win the greatest air battle in the history of aviation.

The first full reappraisal of one of Britain's great fighter aces, this book examines the truth behind Tuck's 1956 biography, Fly for Your Life. It looks at the evidence behind the myths, checks out some of the exaggerated stories and reveals the real Stanford Tuck. In January 1942 Bob Tuck was the top-scoring British fighter ace with an official score of twenty-nine enemy aircraft destroyed. During the Battle of Britain his legendary prowess grew and he was posted to command a leaderless and demoralized squadron, this time flying Hurricanes.

Between 1918 and 1955, 60 airmen were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and Two Bars. In this book, recorded for the first time together are the mini-biographies of those 60 along with the citations that accompanied their awards, or in some cases the recommendations for them. As the listener will discover, the range of airmen who received the DFC and Two Bars cover most of the ambit of World War II operations, be they fighter pilots, bomber pilots, night-fighter aircrew, aircrew navigators, engineers, etc, or reconnaissance pilots

Listeners will learn over 100 facts about military sea and military air vehicles, such as helicopters, bombers, and stealth flighters, as well as submarines, mammoth ships, and militarized barges.

General Douglas MacArthur is one of the towering figures of World War II, and indeed of the 20th century, but his leadership of the second largest air force in the USAAF is often overlooked. When World War II ended, the three numbered air forces (the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Seventh) under his command possessed 4,004 combat aircraft, 433 reconnaissance aircraft, and 922 transports.

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the US effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly.

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.

The author was drawn into the United States Army through ROTC, and he went through training to fly helicopters in combat over Vietnam. His experiences are notable because he flew both Huey “Slicks” and Huey “Gunships”: the former on defense as he flew troops into battle, and the latter on offense as he took the battle to the enemy. Through this book, the author relives his experiences flying and fighting, with special attention given to his and other pilots’ day-to-day lives.

Since he was a young boy, Joe Balzer dreamed of flying. He pursued his goal with passion and earned his pilot licenses, piling up hours of flight time with a wide variety of planes and jets with one overarching goal: to one day fly for a major airline. But Joe had a problem. He was an alcoholic and refused to admit to himself that he had a problem. His alcoholism caught up with him in March 1990, when Joe was arrested with two other pilots for flying a commercial airliner while under the influence of alcohol.

Wings of War is the incredible true story of the P-51 Mustang fighter and the unlikely crew of designers, engineers, test pilots, and army officers who brought it from the drafting table to the skies over World War II. This is hardly a straightforward tale of building an airplane—for years, the team was stymied by corruption within the defense industry and stonewalled by the Army Air Forces, who failed to understand the Mustang’s potential.

December 7, 1941. The Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was sucked into World War II. The nation was furious, and the public demanded revenge. Back home, Colonel James Doolittle of the United States Airforce was tasked with organizing a raid on Japan. On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers were flown from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet off the coast of Japan. The daring mission was successful in creating fear within the hearts of the enemy and won support for the military back home. This is the story of The Doolittle Raid.

Sam Kleiner’s The Flying Tigers uncovers the hidden story of the group of young American men and women who crossed the Pacific before Pearl Harbor to risk their lives defending China. Led by legendary army pilot Claire Chennault, these men left behind an America still at peace in the summer of 1941 using false identities to travel across the Pacific to a run-down airbase in the jungles of Burma.

In April 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army steamrolled through Burma, capturing the only ground route from India to China. Supplies to this critical zone would now have to come from India by air—meaning across the Himalayas, on the most hazardous air route in the world. SKIES OF THUNDER is a story of an epic human endeavor, in which Allied troops faced the monumental challenge of operating from airfields hacked from the jungle, and took on “the Hump,” the fearsome mountain barrier that defined the air route.