Military Air

From near-suicidal RAF attacks in 1940 through to the dawn of the jet age in 1945, Flames in the Sky captures the astonishing drama, intensity, heroism, and incomparable exhilaration of the World War Two air war like no other book. This epic global struggle between Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mustangs, Mosquitos, Messerschmitts, Zeros, Kamikazes, and more is brought vividly to life by a writer who was himself in the thick of the action.

Declassified government records shed additional light on the cancellation and subsequent destruction of the Avro Arrow. The controversial cancellation of the Avro Arrow - an extraordinary achievement of Canadian military aviation - continues to fire debate today. When the program was scrapped in 1959, all completed aircraft and those awaiting assembly were destroyed, along with tooling and technical information. Was abandoning the program the right decision? Did Canada lose more than it gained?

There have been volumes of books written about the development of US airpower and the technological specifications of each American or Allied aircraft. This is not one of them. This book focuses on the young men who answered the call to duty and were literally transformed from “farm boys to fighter pilots.”

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.

From the authors of the best-selling The Finest Hours comes the riveting, deeply human story of President John F. Kennedy and two U-2 pilots, Rudy Anderson and Chuck Maultsby, who risked their lives to save America during the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the ominous two weeks of the Cold War's terrifying peak, two things saved humanity: the strategic wisdom of John F. Kennedy and the U-2 aerial spy program. On October 27, 1962, Kennedy, strained from back pain, sleeplessness, and days of impossible tension, was briefed about a missing spy plane.

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."

Caroline Johnson was an unlikely aviator candidate. A tall blonde debutante from Colorado, she could have just as easily gone into fashion or filmmaking, and yet she went on to become an F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapons System Operator. She was one of the first women to fly a combat mission over Iraq since 2011, and she was the first woman to drop bombs on ISIS. Jet Girl tells the remarkable story of the women fighting at the forefront in a military system that allows them to reach the highest peaks and yet is in many respects still a fraternity.

On April 12, 1945, a fleet of American B-29 bombers flew toward Japan. Their mission was simple: Stop World War II by burning the cities, factories, and military bases of the Japanese em­pire, thereby forcing an unconditional surrender. But it didn't go as planned. Onboard one of the B-29s, the City of Los Angeles, a phosphorus bomb detonated inside the plane. Staff Sergeant Henry E. "Red" Erwin absorbed the blast of burning phosphorus and managed to throw the still-flaming bomb overboard be­fore collapsing from the third-degree burns that covered his body.

Wayne K. Blickenstaff, known as "Blick," was a stalwart of the 350th Fighter Squadron of the 353rd Fighter Group based at Goxhill, Metfield, and Raydon, England, as part of the Eighth Air Force prosecuting the strategic air campaign against Germany. As an original cadre member, he rose steadily through the ranks to a Lieutenant Colonel and Group Operations Officer. His double "ace" status included a Me262 jet fighter and the destruction of five aircraft in one mission—giving him rare "ace in a day" status.

During the Second World War, Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving 80,000 pilots dead. But the terrible truth is that much of the bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of the Allied military leadership, leading to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Focusing on the crucial period from 1942 to 1945, Fire and Fury tells the story of the American and British bombing campaign through the eyes of those involved.

The Yalu River Boys is the true story of the forgotten men from the forgotten war. Follow a B-29 bomber crew as it battles Russian MiG-15 fighters in the heart of MiG Alley during the Korean War. Learn the heartbreaking truth of the communist prison camp gulags, the cruelty of the North Korean enemy, and the propaganda attacks from friend and foe. Marvin King joined the US Air Force in peacetime but soon found himself in the midst of jet-age aerial combat, captured and taken into China, and later subjected to the abject horror of a place in North Korea known only as The Caves.

A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, in 1973, Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a lifelong passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary circumnavigation of the globe, and in its pursuit he set several ballooning distance records, including the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1984. But the aeronautical feats that first made him an American hero had occurred a quarter of a century earlier....

It was just supposed to be a decoy weapon, a little robot aircraft with a bomb on board for the enemy aircraft to chase instead of shooting down an Allied bomber. Then "Count" Alexandru ("Wizard") Volosevic modified a new British radio homing system and the little, blind, drone aircraft became an active, target seeking, stand-off cruise weapon. It was hard to tell which battle was going to be worse; the brawl with the Luftwaffe as the Eighth Air Force began daylight bombing against the Third Reich, the fight to get the weapon into Allied Airman's hands, or the fight against Nazi ...

If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence - a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an industry that would redefine transportation and warfare for future generations.

July 1967: At the Moscow Air Show, the Soviets unveiled six new state-of-the-art aircraft. From among this lineup of new fighters and interceptors stood the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 - purportedly capable of outrunning and outmaneuvering any aircraft in NATO’s inventory. Yet even before its public appearance in Moscow, the MiG-25 had been a grave concern for Western analysts.

Before becoming an instructor in the Navy's Topgun program, Dave "Bio" Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating from college, he joined the Navy with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot. But, his eyesight waning, he knew that he would never be able to reach that goal. Undaunted, he plowed ahead and found his niche as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new Grumman F-14 Tomcat.

On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out onto his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power.

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.

In 1929, a 22-year-old maverick named Frank Whittle - a self-taught aeronautical obsessive and risk-takingly brilliant RAF pilot - presented a blueprint for a revolutionary, jet-powered aircraft engine to the Air Ministry. His idea had the potential to change the course of history, but it was summarily rejected. In this meticulously researched biography, Duncan Campbell-Smith charts Whittle's stoic efforts to build his jet engine in the interwar years.

At the outbreak of the Second World War D. M. Crook, of No. 609 Squadron AAF, was at Yeadon, still undergoing his training; by the winter of 1939-40, he had his wings. Successfully applying to return to his Squadron, then on defense duties in northern England, Crook began to familiarize himself with their new fighter: the Spitfire. Soon they were posted to RAF Northolt, and it was at this time that Crook, much to his chagrin, was left grounded, undergoing knee surgery as they flew over Dunkirk.