Download or read book Churchill and His Airmen written by Vincent Orange and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Dowding of Fighter Command examines the relationships Churchill had with the airmen of the RAF. Winston Churchill probably had more impact on 20th-century British military history than any other person, especially during World War II. Yet of the many volumes since that war that deal with his relationships with generals and admirals, most surprisingly, there seems not to be a single book devoted to Churchill as a would-be pilot, and, more importantly, to the relationships he had with a host of airmen between 1914 and 1945. Exceptional air marshals of his time included Dowding, Park, Portal, Freeman, Tedder, Coningham, and Harris. Such men had years of professional expertise behind them, and those who had reached the top by 1943 were such strong characters that not even the prime minister could dominate them in policy-making. Crucially, Churchill had supported the independence of the RAF from other services, and while he did bully and cajole, even abuse his airmen, he also listened to them and their plans, and inspired them. With his expert eye, respected historian and professor Vincent Orange, has carefully studied and evaluated every detail of Churchill’s relationships with his closest officers to produce a masterful analysis of a neglected subject.

Download or read book What the RAF Airman Took to War written by Bill Howard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-10 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between July and October 1940, in what became known as the Battle of Britain, a nation held its breath while the pilots of the Royal Air Force battled Hitler's Luftwaffe in the skies above England. A huge number of airmen lost their lives in this hard-fought episode and in the four years of air campaigns that followed, and those who survived faced terrifying risks; as Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'. In this beautifully illustrated tribute to 'The Few', Bill Howard catalogues the objects which were essential to every wartime pilot, from the superstitious good-luck charm to the parachute on which his life might have depended and a wealth of other poignant items relating to his day-to-day existence during the air war against the Nazis.

Download or read book Churchill s Secret War With Lenin written by Damien Wright and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine

Download or read book Churchill s Few written by Andy Saunders and published by Pen and Sword Aviation. This book was released on 2024-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In speaking of the RAF fighter pilots who fought and won the Battle of Britain, the words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few..." immortalized those pilots as "The Few". During the period 10 July to 31 October 1940, a total of 2,917 airmen flew and fought in the Battle of Britain. Of that number, 544 were killed during the battle and a further 795 would lose their lives before the end of 1940. This book is a tribute to these men. Both casualties and those who survived are included in this photographic record. As the reader looks at the faces of these men, they are looking at the individuals who collectively held the Luftwaffe at bay during 1940 as the Germans attempted to wrest air superiority from the RAF, an essential prerequisite to their planned invasion of Britain. Day in and day out these young men held the line against overwhelming odds. The nation, collectively, knew exactly what Churchill meant in his laudatory speech and understood the debt that was owed to the "Few". Speaking in 1980, HRH The Queen Mother said: "In the hearts of the British people there will always be a special place for The Few. Without their courage, skill and determination in the face of fearful odds, who can tell what the final outcome of the war might have been. Many of them gave their lives, young lives, which held so much promise for the future. They will always be remembered." This book will hopefully go some way towards marking that remembrance, respecting the debt that is owed to those airmen.

Download or read book The Splendid and the Vile written by Erik Larson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Download or read book Churchill s Sacrifice of the Highland Division France 1940 written by Saul David and published by Brasseys Uk Limited. This book was released on 2004 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a week after the last British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender. More than 10,000 men were driven into five years of captivity in prison camps. The author traces the story of the Highland Division, from its arrival in France to its final desperate stand.

Download or read book Airmen Or Noahs written by Murray Fraser Sueter and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Flying to Victory written by Mike Bechthold and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canadian-born flying ace Raymond Collishaw (1893–1976) served in Britain’s air forces for twenty-eight years. As a pilot in World War I he was credited with sixty-one confirmed kills on the Western Front. When World War II began in 1939, Air Commodore Collishaw commanded a Royal Air Force group in Egypt. It was in Egypt and Libya in 1940–41, during the Britain’s Western Desert campaign, that he demonstrated the tenets of an effective air-ground cooperation system. Flying to Victory examines Raymond Collishaw’s contribution to the British system of tactical air support—a pattern of operations that eventually became standard in the Allied air forces and proved to be a key factor in the Allied victory. The British Army and Royal Air Force entered the war with conflicting views on the issue of air support that hindered the success of early operations. It was only after the chastening failure of Operation Battleaxe in June 1941, fought according to army doctrine, that Winston Churchill shifted strategy on the direction of future air campaigns—ultimately endorsing the RAF's view of mission and target selection. This view adopted principles of air-ground cooperation that Collishaw had demonstrated in combat. Author Mike Bechthold traces the emergence of this strategy in the RAF air campaign in Operation Compass, the first British offensive in the Western Desert, in which Air Commodore Collishaw’s small force overwhelmed its Italian counterpart and disrupted enemy logistics. Flying to Victory details the experiences that prepared Collishaw so well for this campaign and that taught him much about the application of air power, especially how to work effectively with the army and Royal Navy. As Bechthold shows, these lessons learned altered the Allied approach to tactical air support and, ultimately, changed the course of the Second World War.

Download or read book Churchill Roosevelt Company written by Lewis E. Lehrman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s grins and Winston Churchill’s victory signs, the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the two nations. Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked--and occasionally did not work--by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own and thwarting others’. This was the domain of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with his boss; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill, who had the difficult task, not always well performed, of managing their subordinates and who frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves. Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy at the core of the Anglo-American alliance.

Download or read book Churchill s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare written by Giles Milton and published by Picador. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six gentlemen, one goal: the destruction of Hitler's war machine In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Giles Milton's Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.

Download or read book Churchill s Generals written by John Keegan and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keegan has assembled a cast of seventeen generals whose reputations were made (and some of them broken) by Churchill and the Second World War. Churchill's reputation as prime minister during the Second World War fluctuated according to the successes and failures of his generals. Most of them were household names, and often heroes, during the war years. All of them were prey to the intolerance, interference, irascibility - and the inspiration - of the man who wanted to be both the general in the field and the presiding strategic genius. He sacked his warlords ruthlessly, yet in the end he came to be served by perhaps the greatest generals this country has ever produced. Includes chapters on Wavell, Ironside, Ritchie, Auchinleck, Montgomery, Alexander, Percival, Wingate, Slim and Carton de Wiart. Note: The Publisher regrets that the biographical note for Gary Sheffield is incorrect in the book. Please refer to the Orion website (www.orionbooks.co.uk) for the correct version.

Download or read book Amazing Airmen written by Ian Darling and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2009-09-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canadian and British airmen engaged in fierce and deadly battles in the skies over Europe during the Second World War. Those who survived often had to overcome incredible obstacles to do so. These painstakingly researched stories will enable you to feel what veterans endured while young men in the air war against Nazi Germany.

Download or read book Professional Journal of the United States Army written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Devil s Chariots written by John Glanfield and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scholarly and clear-sighted book … is a happy marriage of history and technology and deserves to become standard reading for serious students of the First World War.' Prof. Richard Holmes 'Fascinating. Excellent pictures and a readable text as well. A wonderful story well told.' Military Illustrated 'The Devil's Chariots is the best single work on the development, from concept to fielding, of British armour in the First World War… Glanfield is also entertaining in addition to being enlightening… The Devil's Chariots is a decent read, and for specialists in the field it will be required reading… The research is both broad and solid, and it appears that this will be the last word on this topic for some time to come.' Robert L. Bateman, contributor to The Journal of Military History, Lexington VA, and a member of the Society for Military History 'This book is in a class of its own … it brings a new maturity to the study of the tank, most particularly from the human perspective, and best of all, it is very readable'. David Fletcher, Senior Archivist, Tank Museum, Bovington, author of The Tank 'This volume would be a great addition to the library of anyone wishing to try to understand World War 1 better. I greatly enjoyed this evidently well-researched and highly interesting book… It taught me much. I am grateful.' Royal Naval Sailing Association Journal 'Fascinating … all military procurement officers should read it… All this is excellently set out, especially the people who made [the tank weapon] possible and those who resented such new ideas.' Brig Fraser Scott, contributor to The Journal of the Royal Artillery Institution 'John Glanfield sheds new light on the tank's pioneers, their bizarre experimental machines and later triumphs… This intensely researched work … is drawn from previously unpublished primary sources.' Gun Mart 'This is classic research by a world authority.' The Driffield Post 'The author has a sharp eye for detail … an exemplary history of a pivotal aspect of the First World War.' Worcester Evening News 'The Devil's Chariots can fairly claim to be the most intensively researched and detailed account of the tank's origins yet to appear.' Classic Arms & Militaria 'John Glanfield has combined meticulous historical research with a gift for narrative to present a story that both students of the Great War and the general reader will find fascinating. I thoroughly recommend this book.' John Gregory, contributor to The Journal of the Henry Williamson Society The Devil's Chariots is the product of six years of research by author John Glanfield, who wanted to tell the story of the birth of the tank in World War I, and, importantly, the men behind it. Based on personal recollections and official reports Glanfield uncovers the British tank pioneers and their odd machines, the men who supported the new weapon, those who refused to accept their worth and the brave crews who took them into battle.

Download or read book Commander In Chief written by Nigel Hamilton and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Nigel Hamilton's acclaimed World War II saga, the astonishing story of FDR's yearlong, defining battle with Churchill in 1943, as the war raged in Africa and Italy. 1943 was the year of Allied military counteroffensives, beating back the forces of the Axis powers in North Africa and the Pacific—the “Hinge of Fate,” as Winston Churchill called it. In Commander in Chief, Nigel Hamilton reveals FDR’s true role in this saga: overruling his own Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordering American airmen on an ambush of the Japanese navy’s Admiral Yamamoto, facing down Churchill when he attempted to abandon Allied D-day strategy (twice). This FDR is profoundly different from the one Churchill later painted. President Roosevelt’s patience was tested to the limit quelling the prime minister’s “revolt,” as Churchill pressured Congress and senior American leaders to focus Allied energy on disastrous fighting in Italy and the Aegean instead of landings in Normandy. Finally, in a dramatic showdown at Hyde Park, FDR had to stop Churchill from losing the war by making the ultimate threat, setting the Allies on their course to final victory. In Commander in Chief, Hamilton masterfully chronicles the clash of nations—and of two titanic personalities—at a crucial moment in modern history.

Download or read book Military Review written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Winston S Churchill World in Torment 1916 1922 written by Martin Gilbert and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 1327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth volume in the official biography—“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written” (Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times). Covering the years 1916 to 1922, Martin Gilbert’s fascinating account carefully traces Churchill’s wide-ranging activities and shows how, by his persuasive oratory, administrative skill, and masterful contributions to Cabinet discussions, Churchill regained, only a few years after the disaster of the Dardanelles, a leading position in British political life. Included are many dramatic and controversial episodes: the German breakthrough on the Western Front in March 1918, the anti-Bolshevik intervention in 1919, negotiating the Irish Treaty, consolidating the Jewish National Home in Palestine, and the Chanak crisis with Turkey. In all these, and many other events, Churchill’s leading role is explained and illuminated in Martin Gilbert’s precise, masterful style. In a moving final chapter, covering a period when Churchill was without a seat in Parliament for the first time since 1900, Martin Gilbert brilliantly draws together the many strands of a time in Churchill’s life when his political triumphs were overshadowed by personal sorrows, by his increasingly somber reflections on the backward march of nations and society, and by his stark forecasts of dangers to come. “A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . Rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War