Showing titles in Air Forces

For eighty-two years the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), which in 1918 became the Royal Air Force (RAF), maintained a permanent military aviation presence in the Far East. The first RFC units arrived in India in 1915. RAF India grew substantially in the interwar period and throughout World War Two. Various changes in the command structure finally saw the creation of the Far East Air Force (FEAF) in June 1949, covering South East Asia and Hong Kong.

Never Mind, We'll Do It Ourselves is the character-driven story behind the origins of the Predator drone program and the dawn of unmanned warfare. A firsthand account told by an Air Force team leader and a CIA team leader, Never Mind, We'll Do It Ourselves takes the listener into the back offices and secret government hangars where the robotic revolution went from a mad scientist idea to a pivotal part of global air power.

Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."

#1 New York Times bestseller! Frozen in Time is a gripping true story of survival, bravery, and honor in the vast Arctic wilderness during World War II, from the author of New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-La. On November 5, 1942, a US cargo plane slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four...

Visual Friendlies, Tally Target: Surges continues the story of the role of forward air controllers (JTACs) and Close Air Support (CAS), picking up in 2006 and continuing through 2013. This volume covers the evolution of Joint Fires through the colloquial "second phase" of the War on Terror—the...

This is the nonfiction memoir of a young pilot, Bert Stiles, who flew 35 missions in the B-17 Flying Fortress over Germany and Italy during World War II. At 22 years of age, Stiles left college and joined the American Air Force. The next year he began his tour of duty as a copilot of a B-17, flying missions high over Germany, Italy, and other European targets, bombing cities far below.

Nine thousand men of the First British Airborne Division were parachuted into the peaceful countryside that surrounded Arnhem. Their objective was to capture and hold the bridge over the Rhine ahead of the advancing British Second Army. Nine days later, after some of the fiercest street-fighting of the war, 2,000 paratroopers managed to escape to safety.

The dramatic story of Jagdverband 44, the squadron of aces founded by leading Luftwaffe pilot Adolf Galland equipped with the new Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter. Jagdverband (JV) 44 was formed as a result of conflict and dissent within the Luftwaffe's high command. Assembling a small group of disillusioned and weary Luftwaffe fighter aces and flying instructors, Galland moved his unit, JV 44, to Munich, from where it operated the Me 262 against USAAF aircraft bombing targets in Austria and southern Germany.

Thunderbolt is the incredible true life story of Robert S. Johnson, one of America’s leading fighter pilot aces in World War II. His memoir is an action-packed account of how a young man from Lawton, Oklahoma went on to amass 28 enemy kills, the first US Army Air Force pilot in the European theater to surpass Eddie Rickenbacker's World War I tally of 26 enemy planes destroyed.

James "Jim" Davis lived what he considered "an impossible dream" as he piloted a B-24, as part of the 8th Air Force, on nearly 30 missions in the European Theatre during World War II. In this memoir, Davis offers heart-wrenching detail concerning the difficulties of qualifying for the U.S. Army Air Forces pilot program, the strenuous nature of the pilot training program, the anxiety caused by a wartime marriage, and the dangers of flying combat missions over Nazi Germany.

As this fascinating memoir unfolds, moving backwards and forwards through time, two parallel stories emerge: one of a Second World War Spitfire ace whose flying career comes to a premature end when he’s shot down and loses an eye, the other of his progeny, a second generation fighter pilot who eventually reaches the rank of air marshal.

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. 

"A" Force explores an area of World War II deception history that has often been neglected. While older studies have focused on the D-day deception campaign and Britain's infamous double-agents, this work explores the origins of Britain's deception activities to reveal how the British became such masterful deceivers. This is the first work to focus exclusively on "A" Force and the origins of British deception, examining how and why the British first employed deception in World War II. More

On August 9, 1945, on the tiny island of Tinian in the South Pacific, a 25-year-old American Army Air Corps major named Charles W. Sweeney climbed aboard a B-29 Superfortress in command of his first combat mission, one devised specifically to bring a long and terrible war to a necessary conclusion.... The last military officer to command an atomic mission, Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney has the unique distinction of having been an integral part of both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombing runs.

Catkiller 3-2 provides unique insights into the role of the tactical air controller, airborne (TACA) in I Corps as seen through the eyes of one of the pilots who flew low-flying, unarmed, single-engine aircraft in support of marine ground units during the Vietnam War. When Gen. William Westmoreland changed the marines' role in I Corps into a combat one, the Marines found themselves in need of more fixed wing aircraft to handle the TACA missions. 

Undaunted Valor, Lam Son 719 is a novel based on an accurate account of the bravery and dedication of helicopter crews, consisting of mostly teenagers and young officers flying under the most intense combat conditions since WWII. US Army and Marine Corps helicopters flew South Vietnamese ground forces fifty miles into Laos to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail in hopes of providing time for the South Vietnamese to take over the fight and allow American forces to come home.

When we remember the Second World War in the air, we think of fighter pilots and bomber crews. But what was it like for the men and women working as ground crew and in the aircraft factories who also played a crucial role in defeating Hitler? What was it like making history? What sense did these individuals have of what they were doing, either at the time or later? Did they feel they were caught up in the tide of great events? Or were they simply doing their demanding and often dangerous duty?

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Hurricane Girls by Jo Wheeler, read by Claire Rushbrook. While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the...

Penguin presents The Birth of the RAF by Richard Overy, read by Jonathan Keeble. The dizzying pace of technological change in the early 20th century meant that it took only a little over ten years from the first flight by the Wright Brothers to the clash of fighter planes in the Great War. A...

Since the test pilot Harold Harris became the first man to save his life with a parachute in 1922 there have been over 120,000 air force pilots and crew who owe their lives to their parachutes. Into the Silk is full of astounding tales of people who against the odds bailed out of their planes and were therefore able to enter the annals of the Caterpillar Club, a society open only to men and women who survive aviation disaster with the aid of a parachute.