Download or read book Central Coast Aviators in World War II written by Jim Gregory and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tribute to the heroism shown by military pilots and aircrew from rural California towns who risked their lives and made their mark on American history. During World War II, thousands of volunteer combat aviators trained at places like Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and Hancock Field in Santa Maria. Some air cadets and WASPs—young women pilots—lost their lives in training accidents. The graduates would go on to fight in both the Pacific and European theaters. They faced flak bursts and collisions that resulted in horrifying explosions and were sent on strafing runs that made them targets in a lethal shooting gallery. Downed airmen encountered both unexpected kindness and cruel deprivation as prisoners of war. Through interviews and official records, Jim Gregory tells the stories of heroic Central Coast veterans who fought a war that stretched from New Guinea to North Africa.
Download or read book Heroes in the Skies written by Ian Darling and published by Union Square + ORM. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping collection of true stories that capture the bravery of American pilots who helped win WWII. American pilots fought fierce and often deadly battles in every theater of the Second World War, and many overcame incredible obstacles to survive. Meet some of these courageous aviators, including George McGovern, who survived enemy fire that left 110 holes in his aircraft; George H. W. Bush, shot down in the Pacific; Jim Landis, a naval flyer stationed in Pearl Harbor who returned fire even after sustaining a bullet through his hand; Alex Jefferson, a Tuskegee airman shot down over France and taken prisoner; and Betty Blake, one of the little-known women pilots who aided the war effort. Clifton Truman Daniel, a grandson of President Truman, provides the foreword to this collection of carefully researched and vividly told profiles in courage that will transport you to the bullet-ridden, bomb-laden skies of the early 1940s.
Download or read book Air Force Combat Units of World War II written by Maurer Maurer and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1961 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book World War II Pilots written by Michael Burgan and published by Capstone Classroom. This book was released on 2013 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Describes the role pilots played during World War II. Readers' choices reveal various historical details"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book With Their Eyes Turned Skyward written by Michel Nellis and published by . This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work chronicles the untold stories of forty-eight men and one woman who put their lives on hold for freedom and made the ultimate sacrifice. More than sixty-six years have passed since the close of World War II. Each day more and more veterans of this global conflict slip away and soon their stories will be forgotten. The authors of these biographies were determined not to allow the same fate for the forty-nine aviators honored on the Santa Barbara Airport Memorial. Each chapter not only profiles the life of each of these young fliers, but also offers glimpses of World War II history in the making. It took eighteen months to do the research, conduct numerous interviews, and write these stories. Aviation changed forever the way war is fought. It was the key in many of the World War II battles from the South Pacific to the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. All of these aviators had a stake in winning the war from on high and, like da Vinci, kept their eyes turned skyward. They never really returned to Earth. Those who have tasted flight will walk the Earth with their eyes turned skyward, for there they have been and there they long to return....Leonardo da Vinci. Hardbound, 2012, 8.5" x 11," Biblio., Illus., Index, 144 pp.
Download or read book World War II Arroyo Grande written by Jim Gregory and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On December 7, 1941, war came to Arroyo Grande when two local sailors were killed on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. People from the small town were thrust into great circumstances and quickly answered the call for action. A local storekeeper's son won the Silver Star after he brought his flaming B-17 safely back to base. A valley farmworker served with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, largely composed of soldiers of Japanese descent. Chinese guerrillas commanded by Mao Zedong--the future Chairman Mao--threw a birthday party for an Arroyo Grande soldier. At home, community groups like the Arroyo Grande Women's Club brought packed lunches for their Japanese American neighbors on the morning they were forced to leave for the internment camps. Local author Jim Gregory brings to life the sorrows and triumphs of a dramatic period in local history.
Download or read book The Royal Air Force in American Skies written by Tom Killebrew and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By early 1941, the war raged in Europe and Great Britain stood alone against the aerial might of Nazi Germany. Although much of the Royal Air Force's pilot training program had been relocated to Canada and other Dominion countries, the need for pilots remained acute. The British looked to the United States for possible assistance. Passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 allowed for the training of British pilots in the United States and the formation of British Flying Training Schools. These unique schools were owned by American operators, staffed with American civilian instructors, supervised by British Royal Air Force officers, utilized aircraft supplied by the U.S. Army Air Corps, and used the RAF training syllabus. Within these pages, Tom Killebrew provides the first comprehensive history of all seven British Flying Training Schools located in Terrell, Texas; Lancaster, California; Miami, Oklahoma; Mesa, Arizona; Clewiston, Florida; Ponca City, Oklahoma; and Sweetwater, Texas. The first British students arrived in a still-neutral United States in June 1941. Many had never been in an airplane (or even driven an automobile), but they mastered the elements of flight, attended ground school classes, were introduced to the mysteries of the Link trainer and instrument flight, and then ventured out on cross country exercises. Students began night flying with the natural apprehension associated with taking off into a black sky, aided by only a few instruments, a flickering flare path, and limited ground references. Some students failed the periodic check flights and had to be eliminated from training, while others were killed during mishaps and are buried in local cemeteries. Those who finished the course became Royal Air Force pilots. But the story of the British Flying Training Schools is more than the story of young men learning to fly. These young British students would also forge a strong and long-lasting bond of friendship with the Americans they came to know. This bond would last not only during training, but would continue throughout the war, and still exist long after the end of the war.
Download or read book Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II written by Sarah Byrn Rickman and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When the United States entered World War II, the Army needed pilots to transport or "ferry" its combat-bound aircraft across the United States for overseas deployment and its trainer airplanes to flight training bases. Male pilots were in short supply, so into this vacuum stepped Nancy Love and her Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). Initially the Army implemented both the WAFS program and Jacqueline Cochran's more ambitious plan to train women to do many of the military's flight-related jobs stateside. By 1943, General Hap Arnold decided to combine the women's programs and formed the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), with Cochran as the Director of Women Pilots. Love was named the Executive for WASP."
Download or read book Flights of Passage written by Samuel Hynes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping, literary recollection of a pilot's experiences during WWII.
Download or read book Target Hong Kong written by Steven K. Bailey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong. Commander John Lamade started the war in 1941 a nervous pilot of an antiquated biplane. Just over three years later he was in the cockpit of a cutting-edge Hellcat about to lead a strike force of 80 aircraft through the turbulent skies above the South China Sea. His target: Hong Kong. As a storm of antiaircraft fire darkened the sky, watching from below was POW Ray Jones. For three long years he and his fellow prisoners had endured near starvation conditions in a Japanese internment camp. Did these American aircraft, he wondered, herald freedom? Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II had never been told. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this massive operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945: Commander John D. Lamade, five of his fellow U.S. Navy pilots and the POW Ray Jones. Drawing upon oral histories, diary transcripts, and U.S. Navy documents, this book expertly narrates the intertwined experiences of these servicemen to bring the history to life.
Download or read book Eyes of Artillery written by Edgar F. Raines and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2000 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Flights of Passage written by Samuel Hynes and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Hynes, a young Marine bomber pilot in World War II, flew more than 100 missions against the Japanese. He was just 18 when he left home to learn to fly and 21 at the war's end.;In this memoir, he remembers the sensations he experienced in his rites of passage from untrained cadet to war-weary aviator, from innocence to manhood. He presents portraits of his fellow aviators, of the wonder of flying and of the madness of war.;Samuel Hynes is author of "The Auden Generation" and "Edwardian Occasions" and editor of the three volume "Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy".
Download or read book The Army Air Forces in World War II Men and planes written by and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Check Six written by Jim Curran and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2015-07-19 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There were no mission limits for a pilot in the Pacific during World War II; unlike in Europe, you flew until it was time to go home. So it was for James Jug Curran, all the way from New Guinea to the Philippines with the 348th Fighter Group, the first P-47 Thunderbolt outfit in the Pacific. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Curran volunteered to try flying in the blue yonder, and trained as an Army fighter pilot. He got his wish to fly the P-47 in the Pacific, going into combat in August 1943, in New Guinea, and later helping start the Black Rams fighter squadron. The heavy U.S. Thunderbolts were at first curious to encounter the nimble, battle-hardened Japanese in aerial combat, but soon the American pilots gained skill of their own and their planes proved superior. Bombers on both sides could fall to fighters, but the fighters themselves were eyeball to eyeball, best man win. Check Six! is an aviation chronicle that brings the reader into flight, then into the fight, throughout the Pacific War and back. This work, from someone who was there, captures the combat experience of our aviators in the Pacific, aided by pertinent excerpts from the official histories of units that Jug Curran flew with. It is a tale of perseverance, as Curran flew over 200 combat missions, and with the men of the 348th Fighter Group proved the Thunderbolts great capability as they battled their way against a stubborn and deadly foe. This work increases the body of knowledge on the critical role of aviation in the Pacific War, as U.S. fighter pilots took the lead in our counteroffensive against the short-lived island Empire.
Download or read book Pilots in Peril written by Steven Otfinoski and published by Capstone Classroom. This book was released on 2016-07 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tells the story of U.S. pilots who faced danger every day attempting to deliver supplies over "The Hump" to the Chinese during World War II"--
Download or read book Pan Am Ferry Tales written by W. Gordon Schmitt and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-07-21 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, an eccentric band of barnstormers, stunt flyers and commercial pilots joined military recruits to form the Pan American Air Ferries. These civilian pilots helped develop a strategically crucial and highly efficient system for shuttling aircraft to Allied forces around the world that contributed significantly to key campaigns throughout the war. W. Gordon Schmitt's engaging, often amusing memoir recounts the close calls and indelible characters he encountered as navigator in the PAAF, from Brazil to Africa to the Middle East and beyond.
Download or read book Hellcat Tales written by Robert Gadbois and published by Merriam Press. This book was released on 2005-12 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From enlistment in 1942, through cadet aviation training, joining VBF-12/Air Group 12 as a SB2C Helldiver pilot, later switching to the F6F Hellcat, embarking on the USS Randolph (CV-15), and conducting air operations including fighter sweeps over Tokyo, combat missions over Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and fighting off kamikaze attacks.
