Military Air

Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Ian McPhedran takes us to the heart of the RAAF through personal accounts of fighter pilots’ bombing raids over Iraq, of hi-tech spy planes over Afghanistan, of the operational nerve centre of the Middle East war, and of the men and women who deliver humanitarian aid across the world. This is the compelling narrative, in the RAAF’s 90th year, of its aircraft, leadership, traditions, and personalities at a time of rapid change.

Trapped inside a burning Lancaster bomber, 20,000 feet above Berlin, airman John Martin consigned himself to his fate and turned his thoughts to his fiancee back home. In a miraculous turn of events, however, the 21-year-old was thrown clear of his disintegrating airplane and found himself parachuting into the heart of Nazi Germany. He was soon to be captured and began his period as a prisoner of war.

Uniting against the Reich: The American Air War in Europe addresses how the United States swiftly reversed its air war against the Axis powers by reevaluating both individual agency and the structural elements that impeded the US from taking the lead in the European Theater. Luke W. Truxal argues that the appointment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Supreme Allied Commander incorporated various air commands under a single authority, which allowed them to unify their efforts against a specific strategic objective.

Buster, the football flyboy, was part of the Greatest Generation. Old letters seeded Football Flyboy, letters that are a one-sided conversation of a man who lived for someone more important than himself. The struggles of war and his constant change of location kept him from receiving mail regularly, causing frustration and loneliness. Each letter has been unedited with grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors preserved to demonstrate the letters' authenticity.

These are the details of every day events that happened during combat in Vietnam, as told to me by my husband and his comrades, many of whom I have met over the last 19 years. You will hear about how he and I have dealt with PTSD. We have been to his unit reunions every year for the last 19 years and have became good friends with the men of C/1/5, and also the wives and family members of those who were killed over 50 years ago.

It is not often that a long-hidden gem of a manuscript is published, bringing a moment in WWII history to vivid life for today’s audiences. Geoffrey Wellum’s First Light was one example. The memoir of Timothy Vigors is another. Born in Hatfield but raised in Ireland and educated at Eton and Cranwell, Vigors found himself in France in 1940 flying Fairey Battle bombers. After the Fall he joined the fighters of 222 Squadron, with whom he saw frantic and distinguished service over Dunkirk and persevered through the dangerous days of the Battle of Britain, when he became an ace.

No previously published work examines General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold’s role in depth during the Pacific War of 1944-1945, in the context of planning for the destruction of Japan. In this new study, Herman S. Wolk, retired Senior Historian of the U.S. Air Force, examines the thinking of Hap Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces (AAF), during World War II. Specifically, Wolk concentrates on Arnold’s leadership in crafting the weapons, organization, and command of the strategic bombing offensive against Japan, which culminated in Japan’s capitulation in the summer of 1945, ending the Pacific War.

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.

Looking ahead to future airpower requirements, this engaging and ground-breaking book on the history and future of American combat airpower argues that the USAF must adapt to the changes that confront it or risk decline into irrelevance. To provide decision makers with the necessary analytical tools, Jeffrey J. Smith uses organizational modeling to help explain historical change in the USAF and to anticipate change in the future.

Jack and Charlie Davis, along with a new companion, Jimmy Ardana, are part of the Allied effort to stop the Japanese at Port Moresby in May 1942. But the Allies have received little in the way of reinforcements, and the only fighter available to face the Japanese Zero is the difficult to handle Bell P-39. Charlie flies dangerous reconnaissance missions to determine the location of the Japanese Navy. Jack, supposedly on his way home to the States, is diverted to be a flight commander in the 8th Fighter Group at Port Moresby.

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

The Soviet-built MiG-15 swept-wing fighter startled the world when it was introduced into combat during the Korean War in the early 1950s. The West had no idea that Russia could produce such a capable fighter. Some 35 years later, former Marine aviator Paul Entrekin burst onto the North American Air Show circuit with the first civilian-owned MiG-15. His story tells of the myriad of challenges in obtaining, test-flying, licensing this first-of-its-kind air show aircraft. It's a walk down memory lane that includes some of the most well-known names in aviation.

On 5 December 2002, trainee pilot Nathan Gray walked away from an 'unsurvivable' crash at RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire. His instructor, seated behind him, was killed instantly. Despite the physical pain and mental scars, he found the strength and resilience to continue his flying career. Today Commander Nathan Gray is one of the UK's elite test pilots - the best of the best.

The second book in this series follows the history of the "Guinea Pig Club". Founded by the brilliant plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe, this is probably the most exclusive club in the world, and one no one would want to join given the chance. McIndoe directed operations, re-constructing his patients and inspired them to rebuild their own lives.

It was the evening of 16 May 1943. Nineteen modified Lancaster bombers from 617 Squadron RAF, under the command of youthful Wing Commander Guy Gibson, roared into the night sky from their Lincolnshire base. They were on a top-secret Bomber Command mission, codenamed Operation Chastise, now regarded as one of the most dangerous and audacious bombing raids of World War II - an attack on the formidable, well-defended dams of Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Slung beneath the belly of each aircraft was one of the war’s greatest secrets - a bouncing bomb.

In 1954, the US Air Force launched an ambitious program known as WS-117L to develop the world's first reconnaissance satellite. The goal was to take photographic images from space and relay them back to Earth via radio. Because of technical issues and bureaucratic resistance, however, WS-117L was seriously behind schedule by the time Sputnik orbited Earth in 1957 and was eventually cancelled. Eyeing the Red Storm examines the birth of space-based reconnaissance from the perspective of WS-117L.

Combat Talons in Vietnam is a personal account of the first use of C-130s in the Vietnam War. One night, John Gargus, a mission planner, oversaw an operation in which the aircraft - carrying 11 crew members - failed to return from a nighttime mission. For 30 years, a search for the missing aircraft remained in progress. When wartime mission records were declassified, Gargus embarked on a long journey of inquiry, research, and puzzle-solving to reconstruct the events of that mission and the fate of its crew.

During the Second World War, Flt Lt Richard Stevens led an extraordinary campaign as an RAF nightfighter. Known to contemporaries as "Cat's Eyes" and by the height of his success in July 1941 as the "Lone Wolf", Flt Lt Stevens was the RAF's highest scoring nightfighter pilot with 14 victories. What makes his story unique is that all this was achieved without the aid of radar or another crew member. Instead, Flt Lt Stevens used extraordinary skill, instinct, and innate marksmanship.

For the soldiers and officers of Australia's Special Air Service (SAS) Regimentâ¿¿ this is not just their professional mottoâ¿¿ but a creed that shapes their lives. The SAS is among the world's most respected special forces unitsâ¿¿ a crack team of men from the Australian Defence Force who can be relied upon to handle the most difficultâ¿¿ strategically sensitive and dangerous of military tasks.

Near the end of World War II, in an attempt to attack the United States mainland, Japan launched its fu-go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary and high-explosive bombs designed to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere and drift to the west coast of North America. After reaching the mainland, these fu-go, the Japanese hoped, would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states, ultimately causing the United States to divert wartime resources to deal with the domestic crisis.