Military Air

Tornado Boys is the latest in the ever-popular Boys series and differs from earlier titles. With the introduction of female pilots to the RAF in 1994, the Tornado was the first aircraft to be flown by both men and women. This is acknowledged in the book with a chapter written by one female pilot. Another aspect that makes this book different from the rest of the series is that it covers an aircraft which is still in active service, especially as a key player in current Middle East operations.

This book relates the part played by Royal Navy Top Guns in defence of UK’s global national interests since World War II. It is an intimate account of the author’s “technicolour” journey to Top Gun status, the fighter pilot élite of Britain’s armed forces, and provides insight into the real world behind the blockbuster movie.

Eddie Rickenbacker was a WWI fighter ace. He arrived in France as a fresh greenie who knew little about flying and less about air combat. He learned everything he needed while fighting against the German air force and the famous Flying Circus commanded by Manfred von Richthofen. In this biography of his wartime experiences, Eddie tells us of his midair adventures and battles as well as how he learned to "defeat the hun" and earned the title of Ace.

Alone, unprepared, and weak. These are generally the words used to describe Britain's position in 1940, part of a narrative that has been built up ever since the end of World War II. However, the reality is very different. On land, sea, and in the air, Britain was prepared. It had the most powerful navy in the world; the RAF was relatively strong, but more importantly, was operating as part of a plan and a joined-up group system that was in reality never in any real danger of being defeated; even the post-Dunkirk British Army was better armed than the post-war narrative tells us.

Spitfire Ace provides a vivid portrait of the few that flew in the Battle of Britain. The battle, in 1940, was one of the most famous air battles in the history of warfare. It is a story of ruthless organisation, and brilliant control and command. And at its heart is a legendary figure, the RAF fighter pilot, and one particular plane, a piece of machinery of almost mythic historical glamour: the Supermarine Spitfire.

The birth of the Royal Air Force marked a pivotal moment in military history. World War I was frozen in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare, which gave strategic urgency to any means of directly attacking enemy resources and morale. The new technologies of air power held promise, and by 1917 German bombers had begun attacking British cities.

Between 1918 and 1955, 60 airmen were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and Two Bars. In this book, recorded for the first time together are the mini-biographies of those 60 along with the citations that accompanied their awards, or in some cases the recommendations for them. As the listener will discover, the range of airmen who received the DFC and Two Bars cover most of the ambit of World War II operations, be they fighter pilots, bomber pilots, night-fighter aircrew, aircrew navigators, engineers, etc, or reconnaissance pilots

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?

As American forces pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific from 1942-1944, their island-hopping campaign ultimately made it possible for the Air Force to conduct bombing runs over the Japanese mainland. The first serious air raids came in November 1944, after the Americans had captured the Marianas Islands, and through February 1945, American bombers concentrated on military targets at the fringes of the city, particularly air defenses.

On 8th June 1940, the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two destroyer escorts HMS Ardent and Acasta were sighted by the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst and her sister ship Gneisenau. In a brutal gun battle that lasted over an hour, all British ships were sunk and more than 1500 men lost their lives. Why had Glorious left the main troop convoy to proceed independently? Why was she so lightly protected? Why did British Intelligence give no warning that the German battlecruisers were close by?

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

On the 75th anniversary of the Coventry bombing, acclaimed historian Frederick Taylor brilliantly details this momentous act and analyzes its impact on World War II and the moral quandaries it still engenders about the nature of warfare.

To Command the Sky is a scholarly record of the fight for domination of the skies over Western Europe during World War II. It also explains the technical details of the tactics used to defeat the Luftwaffe. This book is important for serious students of World War II or military aviation.

At the height of World War II, a B-24 Liberator bomber vanished with its crew while on a training mission over upstate New York. The final hours and ultimate resting place of pilot Keith Ponder and seven other US aviators aboard the plane remain mysteries to this day. The tale is at once a compelling instance of loss on the World War II American home front and a more extensive, largely unreported history.

Chris Burwell charts one man's career in aviation from joining the RAF in 1969 aged eighteen, to having responsibility for training pilots for the world's major airlines nearly fifty years later. After training at RAF Cranwell and RAF Valley and a tour as a flying instructor on Jet Provosts, he joined the Harrier Force, flying on front-line squadrons in the United Kingdom and Germany during the Cold War and as an instructor on the Harrier Conversion Unit.

During 1944, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur's forces fought their way from New Guinea to the Philippines, Allied air commander Gen. George Kenney, discarding pre-war doctrine, planned and ran an "air blitz" offensive. His 5th Air Force drove forward like a tank army, crash-landing in open country, seizing terrain, bulldozing new airfields, winning air control, and moving forward. At airfields on the front line, Rocky Boyer kept the radios working for the 71st Tactical Reconnaissance Group, a fighter-bomber unit.

No previously published work examines General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold’s role in depth during the Pacific War of 1944-1945, in the context of planning for the destruction of Japan. In this new study, Herman S. Wolk, retired Senior Historian of the U.S. Air Force, examines the thinking of Hap Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces (AAF), during World War II. Specifically, Wolk concentrates on Arnold’s leadership in crafting the weapons, organization, and command of the strategic bombing offensive against Japan, which culminated in Japan’s capitulation in the summer of 1945, ending the Pacific War.

On August 29, 1944, the 15th US Army Air Force unleashed 500 bombers against oil and rail targets throughout central Europe. It dispatched the 20th Squadron of the Second Bombardment Group on what they regarded as an easy assignment: attack the Privoser Oil Refinery and associated railroad yards at Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. This "milk run" deteriorated into the bloodiest day in the Second Bombardment Group's history.

When the US president, Harry S Truman, declared the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, he could not have known that the resultant Cold War would persist for over forty years until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. In addition to nuclear and conventional military friction between the Eastern and Western blocs, the struggle for dominance involved a remarkable range of activities including the space race, psychological efforts, espionage, even rivalry at sporting functions and technological events.

For the soldiers and officers of Australia's Special Air Service (SAS) Regimentâ¿¿ this is not just their professional mottoâ¿¿ but a creed that shapes their lives. The SAS is among the world's most respected special forces unitsâ¿¿ a crack team of men from the Australian Defence Force who can be relied upon to handle the most difficultâ¿¿ strategically sensitive and dangerous of military tasks.