Military Aviation

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.

How would a distant intelligence contact earth? Shawna is an Air Force officer with remembrances of the future. Trapped in a structured military world, her unearthly memories persist for nearly three decades, culminating in a message from the stars. Meanwhile, on a distant planet, alien life is struggling with their attempt to communicate with life on earth. Shawna is their target. The author of six books in the series "Coastal British Columbia Stories" ventures into an exciting new genre, military aviation science fiction, where the C-130 Hercules is the biggest hero.

When Jox McNabb is expelled from school he is forced to look to his future. Inspired by the sight of a Hurricane flying over him, he becomes determined to join the RAF. And after basic training, Jox is posted to RAF Montrose with the growing group of other recruits he has met along the way.

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.

The Cold War drove military innovation and none more than the need to spy on Soviet Bloc countries in the 1950s. The best way to spy other than tap phones and have agents on the ground was from the air. For this several cutting edge aircraft were designed and built by the legendary Kelly Johnson and Lockheed Skunk works – which pushed the boundaries of technology. At the same time a secret airbase to test these revolutionary aircraft in the form of Area 51 came into being. Follow the exciting true story of some very famous aircraft that would fly faster and higher than anything seen ...

From the author of bestselling Sisters in Captivity, seven remarkable stories of men who served from WWI to Korea–their wartime exploits and achievements through aviation.

The Dambusters were the go-to forces for dangerous precision attacks: They bombed Hitler's prize battleship, Tirpitz, as well as rocket sites, weapon strongholds, and the dams at the heart of the industrial Ruhr; they targeted enemy leaders including Hitler and Mussolini; and they created a false fleet on D-day, which fooled the Germans. But they also suffered brutal losses, with 75 percent of 617 Squadron killed in action by the end of the war.

Peace has returned to the Pacific after the Taiwan War, but it doesn’t last. The Korean peninsula erupts in fire and blood, drawing America into a fresh conflict that sees use of some of the world’s deadliest weapons. In the aftermath, Navy fighter pilot Jack Knapp tells a news reporter about his experiences fighting the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and how he helped prevent a nuclear attack that could have destroyed an American city.

When Diane Diekman became an aviation maintenance officer (a “greenshirt”) in the US Navy in 1978, her challenges included proving herself professionally before gaining the acceptance and respect routinely granted to men. Navy Greenshirt: A Leader Made, Not Born is the story of a female pioneer in the male-dominated world of naval aviation. The commanding officer of her first squadron fired her when she failed his hidden test to assert herself as a leader. That painful lesson strengthened the timid South Dakota farm girl and helped define her future leadership style.

In 1993, U.S. women earned the right to fly in combat, but the full story of how it happened is largely unknown. The Fly Girls Revolt chronicles the actions of a band of women who overcame decades of discrimination and prevailed against bureaucrats, chauvinists, anti-feminists, and even other military women. Drawing on extensive research, interviews with women who served in the 1970s and 1980s, and her personal experiences in the Air Force, Eileen Bjorkman weaves together a tale of the women who fought for the right to enter combat and be treated as equal partners in the U.S. military.

Vengeance shows the disastrous results of these decisions on the lowest common denominator: the war fighter. Closely following the actual battles of Midway and Guadalcanal, the listener gets an insider’s view so vivid the smell of cordite will hang in the air.

Dale Brown is the author of 14 New York Times bestsellers, and now in Plan of Attack, he provocatively turns our attention to the threat of a nuclear attack that is beyond our imaginings.

In October of 1910, only four years before the outbreak of World War I, nobody knew whether planes, dirigibles, or balloons would prevail. Within a period of 17 days, this question was on prime display, as the dirigible America tried to cross the Atlantic; huge crowds gathered at horse-racing tracks to watch airplanes race around overhead; and ballooning teams from around the world took off from St. Louis in pursuit of the Bennett International Balloon Cup, given to the balloon that traveled the farthest.

The Millionaires' Unit is the story of a gilded generation of young men from the zenith of privilege: a Rockerfeller; the son of the head of the Union Pacific Railroad; several who counted friends and relatives among presidents and statesmen of the day. They had it all and, remarkably by modern standards, they were prepared to risk it all to fight a distant war in France.

This book is Volume 1 of my memoir and is edited for Large Print and audiobook format. Memoir of an Aviator – My Journey from factory worker to Airline Captain, Volume 1: The Air Force Years is the description of the first half of my professional life and contains details of my enlistment in the Air Force, mechanic training, detailed descriptions of my mechanic days, my choice to become a USAF boom operator, descriptions of training, trips, conversion to the KC-10, more trips, marriage, divorce, joy and heartache. Fly with me as I describe the details that you won't get in other memoirs. ...

An old story I wrote involving a Russian pilot fighting the Islamic front in Georgia, sort of alternative history/timeline. One of my best works back then...

In Marshall's Great Captain, author Kathy Wilson details Andrews's extraordinary life and career. The first biography dedicated to the namesake of Joint Base Andrews, this book sheds a light on Andrews's crucial role in orchestrating US involvement in WWII, as well as the professional relationship between Andrews and Marshall. Wilson raises Andrews's legacy to its legitimate place within the annals of both air power and WWII history and posits that there is a high probability that Andrews was Marshall's first choice for the office of Supreme Allied Commander.

In late May 1927 an inexperienced and unassuming 25-year-old Air Mail pilot from rural Minnesota stunned the world by making the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A spectacular feat of individual daring and collective technological accomplishment, Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris ushered in America's age of commercial aviation.

The 1914-18 conflict narrated through the voices of the men whose combat was in the air. The empty chairs belonged, all too briefly, to the doomed young First World War airmen who failed to return from the terrifying daily aerial combats above the trenches of the Western Front. The edict of their commander in chief was the missing aviators were to be immediately replaced. Before the new faces could arrive, the departed men's vacant seats at the dinner table were sometimes poignantly occupied by their caps and boots, placed there in a sad ritual by their surviving colleagues.

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.