Air War

This book provides young listeners with exciting information on the most modern US military aircraft.

Whirlwind is the only book to examine in depth the human drama behind the most important bombing campaign in history. While the air war against Nazi Germany has been covered in-depth by many books, Barrett Tillman, a renowned authority on military aircraft and the air war in the Pacific, is the first to tackle the air war against Japan. For decades, historians and politicians have debated whether or not Japan was on the verge of surrender in August 1945---before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the 1960s, the US Air Force lacked both the equipment and properly trained pilots to assure air superiority because the Tactical Air Command (TAC) had become little more than a handmaiden to the Strategic Air Command (SAC). TAC focused primarily on the interdiction of enemy bombers and virtually ignored its other responsibilities, such as providing close support of ground troops with conventional weapons and the interdiction of enemy fighters over the battlefield.

The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior—a deep reconnaissance scout and attack aircraft—was legendary to those it supported. Regularly flying mere feet off of the ground while intentionally drawing enemy fire, almost everyone called Kiowa pilots crazy. Responsible for hunting elusive enemy fighters and protecting those under their charge, Kiowa crews displayed a fierce and intense devotion that was unparalleled.

Four days before Christmas in 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail - a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber with the squeeze of a trigger.

A recon team is working the front line trace of defensive positions in the Donbas. Being sneaky is a prerequisite. Then all hell breaks loose when the team gets discovered. Tracers are flying, claymores are popping, and six men start running for their lives. Now someone needs to come and snatch the Deadheads from the jaws of death. Enter Jason Kane and Pole Dance Aviation to the rescue. OV10Js and A7 SUPER SLUFFs start screaming to save the team. Fat Amy gets a load of Shitheads to go to the rescue. There is even and old CIA contract pilot named Toly that's coming along for the ride! How ...

Germany is on the brink of defeat, it's armies pushed back on all fronts. The air force turns to wonder weapons to try turn the tide. No, this is not 1945, it's 1918 and will result in what became known as Black September for the Allies. Felix Wolff would rather not kill his cousin Ted. But if he gets the chance, he will. Ted is an American fighting for the British, while Felix is flying for the Germans in Fokker DVII, an aircraft far superior to Ted's. Both men love the same woman. The three had grown up together and were closer than brothers, and it was she who caused the rift between ...

A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to Vietnam War literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday's writing illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.

Are you a junior officer, senior enlisted, fresh faced diplomat or just curious? War Winning Strategies covers all the basics of military strategy comprehensively. This concise guid for NATO leaders is for you! In today's fast-paced and ever-changing global landscape, understanding military strategy is crucial for junior officers and aspiring foreign and security policy experts and senior NCOs so we can work more effectively together. This concise 70-page guide provides a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental principles of military strategy, empowering you and your subordinates m to...

Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times best sellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage, and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in Central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

Navy Ace pilot and TOPGUN instructor Bill Driscoll demonstrates how his own life-or-death aerial dogfights - and the preparation for them - can help guide high-risk corporate decisions. Interviews with over 200 senior executives and 26 Ace pilots, as well as strategies from Driscoll's own highly successful second career in commercial real estate, reinforce the consistent patterns underlying exceptional performance under pressure.

NEWS: 'The Rhodesian SAS at War'. has just been published and is a thrilling companion to 'The Rhodesian SAS: Their Most Daring Missions.. It tell the story of SAS operations from the earliest part of the bush war until the close of 1978 - where 'The Rhodesian SAS: Their Most Daring Missions' picks up. It's a must read and is available now from Amazon. 'The Rhodesian SAS: Their Most Daring Mission' from the Author of ‘BRAVO TEN’, the explosive true story of some of the greatest secret operations of the Rhodesian SAS…. At the height of the cold war, the small landlocked country of ...

London, 1938: The bookstore just doesn’t feel the same to Gertie Bingham ever since the death of her beloved husband Harry. Bingham Books was a dream they shared together, and without Harry, Gertie wonders if it’s time to take her faithful old lab, Hemingway, and retire to the seaside. But fate has other plans for Gertie. In Germany, Hitler is on the rise, and Jewish families are making the heart-wrenching decision to send their children away from the growing turmoil. After a nudge from her dear friend Charles, Gertie decides to take in one of these refugees.

Here, in his own words, is the true story of America's wildest flying hero, of his extraordinary heroism, and of his greatest battle of all-the fight to survive. The World War II air war in the Pacific needed tough men like Colonel Pappy Boyington and his Black Sheep Squadron. The legendary Marine Corps officer and his bunch of misfits, outcasts, and daredevils gave a new definition to "hell-raising" - on the ground and in the skies.

On America's newest combat base, U.S. Air Force aerial warfare expert Major General Patrick McLanahan and his crew of daring engineers are devising the air combat unit of the future. Known as Air Battle Force, it can launch concentrated, stealthy, precision-guided firepower to any spot on the globe within hours. And soon McLanahan and his warriors will have their first target.

In The Air Force Way of War, Brian D. Laslie examines the revolution in pilot instruction that Red Flag brought about after Vietnam. The program's new instruction methods were dubbed "realistic" because they prepared pilots for real-life situations better than the simple cockpit simulations of the past. In addition to discussing the program's methods, Laslie analyzes the way its graduates actually functioned in combat during the 1980s and '90s in places such as Grenada, Panama, Libya, and Iraq.

Beginning on August 17, 1942, American heavy bomber crews of the Eighth Air Force took off for combat in the hostile skies over occupied Europe. The final price was staggering. 4,300 B-17s and B-24s failed to return; nearly 21,000 men were taken prisoner or interned in a neutral country, and a further 17,650 made the ultimate sacrifice. Luck of the Draw is more than a war story. It’s the incredible, inspiring story of Frank Murphy, one of the few survivors from the 100th Bombardment Group, who cheated death for months in a German POW camp.

Zigzag Men captures the dark humor of an unruly cadre of loosely led, overworked helicopter pilots, reluctant warriors who commute into combat from a remote airfield in Vietnam, zigzagging over the jungle, around one another, and through the indelible intensity of war. Quan Loi is their staging-point for flight operations during the day and a disreputable haven for hardcore, drug-altered malcontents during the long hours of darkness. When Newbies arrive at Quan Loi, the inevitable friendships and animosities become amplified by exhausting hours of combat flying, followed by immoderate ...

The First Counterspy is the story of spy, counterspy, and an American family unwittingly caught in its web. Until this case, the FBI had never recruited civilian counterspies to catch a Soviet agent. The first two were Larry Haas, a leading aviation engineer at Bell Aviation, and Leona Franey, head librarian at Bell's technical library. The FBI pitted them against Andrei Ivanovich Schevchenko, operating legally as one of the highest Soviet officials in the United States during WWII, and illegally as head of a wide-ranging spy network hidden within the American aviation industry.

This landmark study was first published in English by the Naval Institute in 1955. Widely acknowledged for its valuable Japanese insights into the battle that turned the tide of war in the Pacific, the book has made a great impact on American readers over the years. Two Japanese naval aviators who participated in the operation provide an unsparing analysis of what caused Japan's staggering defeat.