Military Aviation

Aerial warfare has dominated war-making for over 100 years, and despite regular announcements of its demise, it shows no sign of becoming obsolete. In this Very Short Introduction, Frank Ledwidge offers a sweeping look at the history of aerial warfare, introducing the major battles, crises, and controversies where air power has taken center stage, and the changes in technology and air power capabilities over time.

Holding the Line chronicles the carrier war in Korea from the first day of the war to the last, focusing on frontline combat while also describing the technical development of aircraft and shipboard operations and how these all affected the broader strategic situation on the Korean Peninsula.

1914 and the start of WW1, the Royal Navy has a tiny, fledgling air service with a small number of unreliable and underperforming aircraft, with no real clue about how to use them. Four years later, they had thousands of fighters including the best of the war, hundreds of seaplanes and the ships to carry them and hundreds of airships patrolling for submarines. They had been used at sea and overland from the Dardanelles to the Western Front and the Mediterranean. Bob Hunt was one of those early aviators. His story and that of his friend Arnold St John-Stevens form the narrative of how the ...

World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy.

This one-volume anthology provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that air power has played in military conflicts over the past century. Comprising 16 essays penned by a global cadre of leading military experts, A History of Air Warfare chronologically examines the utility of air power from World War I to the second Lebanon war, campaign by campaign.

On January 15, 2014, LT Kegan "SMURF" Gill nearly lost his life in the fastest survived ejection in naval aviation history. He's spent every day since fighting to reclaim his mental, physical, and spiritual health—and now, he's encouraging other veterans to join the fight alongside him.

In February 1942, a reconnaissance party of US Army Air Force officers arrived in England. Firmly wedded to the doctrine of daylight precision bombing, they believed they could help turn the tide of the war in Europe. In the months that followed, they formed the Eighth Air Force—an organization that grew at an astonishing rate. To accommodate it, almost seventy airfields were built across the eastern counties of England. At the heart of the Eighth Air Force was its bombardment groups, each equipped with scores of heavily armed, four-engine bombers. This is the story of just one "Bomb Group".

The A-10 has become an important element of CAS and FAC and is like the grizzled old-school soldier of the USAF. It's never been an aviation beauty queen, it's not super-fast, it's not even full to the brim of state of the art electronics. It just shows up, gets angry, scares the hell out enemy ground forces, and goes home. It’s nickname ‘Warthog’ says it all, angry looking and not the prettiest. But still the best ground attack aircraft in service and proven itself in Iraq and Afghanistan. The A-10 Thunderbolt II saw almost constant use in Afghanistan, proving itself yet again, as ...

Evasive maneuvers – break hard right! Ryan ‘Reaper’ Merrick had a good reason to jump at the offer of a fake relationship as the beautiful stranger suggested. This would be an easy way to keep a crazy matchmaker off his back. All of his friends were happily married, so they assumed he should be. Fine. Whatever. Besides, being married for thirty days was nothing, wasn’t it? Caution! Grab the handles and punch out! Sophie Lane inherited the bed-and-breakfast, but only if she was married. She had to have a husband by Friday, or the family estate would be liquidated. The idea of losing ...

A fireball over the Arctic. A missing hydrogen bomb. A Cold War program exposed in a single, shattering night. Before dawn on January 21, 1968, a U.S. Air Force B-52G code-named HOBO 28 streaked across the polar sky carrying four thermonuclear weapons. Its mission—Operation Chrome Dome—kept nuclear-armed bombers in the air 24/7, ready to strike Moscow in minutes. But when a cockpit fire roared through the bomber at 41,000 feet, the crew faced an unthinkable choice: burn alive or bail out into −60 °F darkness. Minutes later a mushroom-shaped blast lit North Star Bay, scattering ...

War in Korea! November 1950... Red China launches a full-scale attack to help North Korea crush South Korea and conquer the peninsula. Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union joins the fight by creating a “false flag” event to shift world opinion about America’s “police action,” alienate her allies, and ultimately trigger World War Three. But when Mao Tse-tung’s trusted interpreter, Marya Zhōu-Rostov, discovers her hometown on the Yalu River is ground zero for the “event,” she teams up with Flyboy and a CIA paramilitary team, risking life and limb to keep Stalin’s false flag from ...

In this dramatic story of World War II, Jay A. Stout describes how the US built an air force of 2.3 million men after starting with 45,000 and defeated the world's best air force. In order to defeat Germany in World War II, the Allies needed to destroy the Third Reich's industry and invade its territory, but before they could effectively do either, they had to defeat the Luftwaffe, whose state-of-the-art aircraft and experienced pilots protected German industry and would batter any attempted invasion.

The Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 is the most advanced multi-role combat aircraft in the world. Capable of flying at nearly twice the speed of sound and powering to a height of more than 10 miles in less time than it takes to boil a kettle, a single Typhoon can also deliver a heavy bombload with such lethal precision that a whole squadron of Lancasters could not have guaranteed the same result.

The story of the man who won the battle of Midway and avenged Pearl Harbor for the United States. 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.

SPRING 1917. A storm is about to break.. A storm of bullets delivered by the Albatros' of the Red Baron and his pilots... Eddie Grenville doesn't know the hell he's about to fly into. Eddie is 19 and just finished school. He is idealistic and maybe a bit naive. He looks up to his older brother Percy, who he has followed into the RFC. But then he finds out that Percy has commited a war crime, one that it revealed would both blacken the family name and tear it apart, though a ruthless press baron is intent on turning Percy into a hero, Eddie, confused and distraught, takes the first posting ...

Sherman Lead is the gripping story of a year flying the F-4 in combat during the Vietnam War, told through the eyes of a fighter pilot. Operating out of Ubon Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand in 1968-69, Gail Peck and his squadronmates in the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing were tasked with flying combat missions into North Vietnam and Laos. The F-4 was heavily involved in the air-to-ground mission at this time, with targets being well defended by enemy anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.

In the near future, the United States has fought a short, bloody war with China in the Pacific. The fighting is over, but the US Navy maintains a blockade. Some call it the First Sino-American War. Others worry it is the start of World War III. In a prison cell in Beijing, Navy fighter pilot Jack Knapp tells his story about the victory in the Battle of Taiwan and how he ended up in a Chinese show trial, accused of crimes against humanity. With his life in the balance, Jack will have to choose between survival and participating in his captors’ lies.

Flying Blind chronicles the adventures of gifted aviator Jean-Louis Thibodeaux in Indo-China during and after the Vietnam War. Following the novel The Train by Tony Jordan, Flying Blind finds the young protagonist, who is assigned the mission of rescuing downed aircrew members, struggling to survive a 365-day tour of duty in a combat squadron during the Vietnam War. Thibodeaux has joined the US Air Force intent on becoming a jet pilot…but sabotage and injury lead to a different fate. A skilled nighttime helicopter pilot, Thibodeaux flies a specially equipped aircraft that allows for ...

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!