Download or read book Cold War Controller written by David N. Penley and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cold War Controller is the compelling memoir of a Canadian Air Force Officer who started off in the junior ranks as a radar technician and later qualified as air traffic controller during the Cold War 1970s and 1980s. Presented as a highly readable collection of vignettes, this volume is chock full of air force history, human interest twists, hilarious pranks, exciting chills and spills of operational flying, situations of the bizarre and unexplainable, and impressions of air force culture. This fascinating collection of anecdotes will interest anyone intrigued by aviation, military history, flying stories, radar technology, self-achievement, the military family, and the overcoming of mental health problems. Learn from Sparky’s mistakes as he begins to succumb to the effects of chronic stress, alcohol dependency, and fear, and yet overcomes his demons to heal and go on learning and working successfully in the Air Force for many more years. Eventually he would end up as a military mental health counsellor.

Download or read book Cold War Controller written by David N. Penley and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2015 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cold War Controller is the compelling memoir of a Canadian Air Force Officer who started off in the junior ranks as a radar technician and later qualified as air traffic controller during the Cold War 1970s and 1980s. Presented as a highly readable collection of vignettes, this volume is chock full of air force history, human interest twists, hilarious pranks, exciting chills and spills of operational flying, situations of the bizarre and unexplainable, and impressions of air force culture. This fascinating collection of anecdotes will interest anyone intrigued by aviation, military history, flying stories, radar technology, self-achievement, the military family, and the overcoming of mental health problems. Learn from Sparky's mistakes as he begins to succumb to the effects of chronic stress, alcohol dependency, and fear, and yet overcomes his demons to heal and go on learning and working successfully in the Air Force for many more years. Eventually he would end up as a military mental health counsellor....

Download or read book RAF East German Fast Jet Pilots in the Cold War written by Nigel Walpole and published by Air World. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You’ll learn what these pilots went through knowing that their actions or reactions could trigger a global nuclear war.” —Historic Aviation RAF and East German Fast-Jet Pilots in the Cold War is the result of ten years of research, involving many visits to the former German Democratic Republic by a small Anglo/German team of military specialists. Their purpose was to explore the lives of RAF and East German fighter and ?ghter-bomber pilots, in the air and on the ground, at work and play, during the Cold War in North Germany. The book is based largely on personal testimony from these pilots, coupled with facts drawn from official archives and comment from other historical sources. Where possible, political considerations have been avoided and no outright criticism has been intended, readers being left to draw their own conclusions on the thinking, strategies, equipment and tactics discussed. Far from being an intellectual polemic on the Cold War, the text and photographs merely record a slice of history as seen through the eyes of a select few who took up arms in the defense of their respective homelands—and faced each other daily across the Iron Curtain. In an insightful conclusion, Nigel Walpole reassess the threat that both sides believed was genuine during those tense decades of the Cold War and examines the possible course and nature of a conflict which neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact wanted but both actively planned for. “The writer has avoided politics where possible, and in doing so reassesses the threat and uncertainty—and ultimately the fears—both air forces faced. It’s truly fascinatingl.” —Flypast

Download or read book The Clandestine Cold War in Asia 1945 65 written by Richard J. Aldrich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A range of clandestine Cold War activities in Asia, from intelligence and propaganda to special operations and security support, is examined here. The contributions draw on newly-opened archives and a two-day conference on the subject.

Download or read book The Cold War Defense of the United States written by John E Bronson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-04-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, as part of its defense strategy against the Soviet Union, the U.S. was forced to establish means of massive long-range attack in response to Soviet advancements in weaponry. These defenses detected and tracked manned bomber aircraft, hostile submarines and missiles launched from the other side of the world. This book shows how these defenses evolved from fledgling stop-gap measures into a complex fabric of interconnected combinations of high-tech equipment over 40 years. Maps illustrate the extent of the geographic coverage required for these warning and response systems and charts display the time frames and vast numbers of both people and equipment that made up these forces.

Download or read book Mission Control written by Michael Peter Johnson and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-10-18 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brave astronauts, flaring rockets, and majestic launches are only one side of the story of spaceflight. Any mission to space depends on years--if not decades--of work by thousands of dedicated individuals on the ground. These are the people whose voices offer a friendly link to Earth in the void of space, whose hands maneuver rovers across the face of planets, and whose skills guide astronauts home. This book is a long-overdue history of three major centers that have managed important missions since the dawn of the space age. In Mission Control, Michael Johnson explores the famous Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany--each a strategically designed micro-environment responsible for the operation of spacecraft and the safety of passengers. He explains the motivations behind the location of each center and their intricate design. He shows how the robotic spaceflight missions overseen in Pasadena and Darmstadt set these centers apart from Houston, and compares the tracking networks used for different types of spacecraft. Johnson argues that the type of spacecraft and the missions they controlled--not the nations they represented--defined how the centers developed, yet these centers ended up playing vital national roles as space technology became a battleground for international power struggles in the Cold War years and even after. The most visible part of a conflict that was just as real as the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan and caused great global anxiety, mission control centers have served as symbols of national security in the public eye and pivotal links in the history of modern technology.

Download or read book Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers written by Nick McCamley and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Draws on previously classified documents to reveal the sums spent on underground shelters for British and American leaders during the Cold War.” —Publishers Weekly Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers tells the previously undisclosed story of the secret defence structures built by the West during the Cold War years. Author Nick McCamley reveals the various bunkers built for the U.S. Administration, including the Raven Rock alternate war headquarters (the Pentagon’s wartime hideout), the Greenbrier bunker for the Senate and House of Representatives, and the Mount Weather central government headquarter, as well as developments in Canadas and extensive coverage of the UK, including the London bunkers and Regional War rooms built in the 1950s to protect against Soviet threat. The book examines the provision, (or more accurately, lack of provision), of shelter space for the general population, comparing the situation in the USA and the UK with some other European countries and with the Soviet Union. McCamley also provides in fascinating detail the vast umbrella of radar stations that spanned the North American continent and the north Atlantic from the Aleutian Islands through Canada to the North Yorkshire moors, all centered upon an enormous secret control center buried hundreds of feet below Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. This is complemented in the United Kingdom with a chain of secret radars codenamed ‘Rotor’ built in the early 1950’s, and eight huge, inland sector control centers, built over 100’ underground at enormous cost. Also included is the UK Warning and Monitoring Organization with its underground bunkers and observation posts, as well as the little known bunkers built by the various local authorities and public utilities.

Download or read book The Phantom in Focus A Navigator s Eye on Britain s Cold War Warrior written by David Gledhill and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever wondered what it was like to fly the Phantom? This is not a potted history of an aeroplane, nor is it Hollywood glamour as captured in Top Gun. This is the story of life on the frontline during the Cold War told in the words of a navigator who flew the iconic jet. Unique pictures, many captured from the cockpit, show the Phantom in its true environment and show why for many years the Phantom was the envy of NATO. It also tells the inside story of some of the problems which plagued the Phantom in its early days, how the aircraft developed, or was neglected, and reveals events which shaped the aircraft's history and contributed to its demise. Anecdotes capture the deep affection felt by the crews who were fortunate enough to cross paths with the Phantom during their flying careers. The nicknames the aircraft earned were not complimentary and included the 'Rhino', 'The Spook', 'Double Ugly', the 'Flying Brick' and the 'Lead Sled'. Whichever way you looked at it, you could love or hate the Phantom, but you could never ignore it for its sheer power and lethal payload. The Phantom in Focus: A Navigator's Eye on Britain's Cold War Warrior is unique in that the author flew in the legendary Phantom in the front line and captured beautiful and amazing unpublished photographs that will appeal to historians, military specialists and modellers alike.

Download or read book Cold War Legacies written by John Beck and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we are now living in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War. Drawing on theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Friedrich Kittler, Michel Serres, Peter Sloterdijk, Carl Schmitt, Bernard Stiegler and Paul Virilio this collection makes connections between Cold War material and conceptual technologies, as they relate to the arts, society and culture.

Download or read book Cold War Command written by Dan Conley and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The part played in the Cold War by the Royal Navy's submarines still retains a great degree of mystery and, in the traditions of the 'Silent Service,' remains largely shrouded in secrecy. Cold War Command brings us as close as is possible to the realities of commanding nuclear hunter-killer submarines, routinely tasked to hunt out and covertly follow Soviet submarines in order to destroy them should there be any outbreak of hostilities. ??Dan Conley takes the reader through his early career in diesel submarines, prior to his transition to the complex and very demanding three-dimensional world of operating nuclear submarines; he describes the Royal Navy's shortcomings in ship and weapons procurement and delivers many insights into the procurement failures which led to the effective bankrupting of the Defence budget in the first decade of the 21st century. In command of the hunter killer submarines Courageous and Valient in the 1980s, he achieved exceptional success against Soviet submarines at the height of the Cold War. He was also involved in the initial deployment of the Trident nuclear weapon system, and divulges hitherto un-revealed facets of nuclear weapons strategy and policy during this period.??This gripping read takes you onboard a nuclear submarine and into the depths of the ocean, and relays the excitement and apprehensions experienced by British submariners confronted by a massive Soviet Navy.??As featured on White Horse News and in the Bath Chronicle.

Download or read book Phantom in the Cold War written by David Gledhill and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An RAF veteran presents an in-depth study of one of the Cold War’s most effective fighter, defense, and reconnaissance planes. The McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom was a true multi-role combat aircraft. Introduced into the Royal Air Force in 1968, it was employed in ground attack, air reconnaissance and air defense roles. Even after the arrival of the Jaguar in the early 1970s, it continued to play a significant role in air defense. In its heyday, the Phantom was Britain’s principal Cold War fighter. There were seven UK-based squadrons, two Germany-based squadrons, and a further Squadron deployed to the Falkland Islands. Phantom in the Cold War focuses on the aircraft’s role as an air defense fighter, exploring its contribution to the Second Allied Tactical Air Force at RAF Wildenrath during the Cold War. Author David Gledhill, who flew the Phantom operationally, also recounts the thrills, challenges, and consequences of operating this temperamental jet at extreme low-level over the West German countryside, preparing for a war which everyone hoped would never happen.

Download or read book Eagles Overhead written by Matt Dietz and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: US Air Force Forward Air Controllers (FACs) bridge the gap between air and land power. They operate in the grey area of the battlefield, serving as an aircrew who flies above the battlefield, spots the enemy, and relays targeting information to control close air support attacks by other faster aircraft. When done well, Air Force FACs are the fulcrum for successful employment of air power in support of ground forces. Unfortunately, FACs in recent times have been shunned by both ground and air forces, their mission complicated by inherent difficulty and danger, as well as by the vicissitudes of defense budgets, technology, leadership, bureaucracy, and doctrine. Eagles Overhead is the first complete historical survey of the US Air Force FAC program from its origins in World War I to the modern battlefield. Matt Dietz examines their role, status, and performance in every US Air Force air campaign from the Marne in 1918, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and finally Mosul in 2017. With the remaking of the post-Vietnam US military, and the impact of those changes on FAC, the Air Force began a steady neglect of the FAC mission from Operation Desert Storm, through the force reductions after the Soviet Union’s collapse, and into the post 9-11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eagles Overhead asks why FACs have not been heavily used on US battlefields since 2001, despite their warfighting importance. Dietz examines the Air Force FAC’s theoretical, doctrinal, institutional, and historical frameworks to assess if the nature of air warfare has changed so significantly that the concept and utility of the FAC has been left behind. From these examinations, Eagles Overhead draws conclusions about the potential future of Air Force FACs.

Download or read book The History Of The Airborne Forward Air Controller In Vietnam written by Lt.-Cmdr. Andrew R. Walton and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Department of Defense predicts that ground forces of the future will wage tomorrow’s wars by replacing large numbers of personnel and organic firepower for advanced technology and superior maneuverability. Those forces must be prepared to face an unconventional enemy who will operate in small, lethal units interspersed with the civilian population rather than facing coalition forces with massed formations. This scenario of blurred lines of battle and difficulty determining friend from foe resembles very closely what the U.S. military faced in Vietnam. This paper will address the successes and failures of United States airborne forward air controllers (FACs), particularly in Vietnam, and whether combat lessons learned were passed from service to service or historically from conflict to conflict. The FAC mission has not significantly changed since the end of the Vietnam War, and a thorough study of operational and tactical lessons learned by those aircrew will significantly enhance today’s FACs ability to find and destroy dispersed enemy forces in a wide array of environments.

Download or read book Thru a Pilot s Eye written by Jud McLester and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2004 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book In War s Wake written by Elizabeth Kier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-30 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark interdisciplinary volume brings together distinguished historians, sociologists, and political scientists to examine the impact of war on democracy.

Download or read book Secrets of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War written by Matthew M. Aid and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years the importance of Signals Intelligence (Sigint) has become more prominent, especially the capabilities of reading and deciphering diplomatic, military and commercial communications of other nations. This work reveals the role of intercepting messages during the Cold War.

Download or read book Collision Course written by Joseph A. McCartin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers' inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues. PATCO's fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics. Now available in paperback, Collision Course sets the strike within a vivid panorama of the rise of the world's busiest air-traffic control system. It begins with an arresting account of the 1960 midair collision over New York that cost 134 lives and exposed the weaknesses of an overburdened system. Through the stories of controllers like Mike Rock and Jack Maher, who were galvanized into action by that disaster and went on to found PATCO, it describes the efforts of those who sought to make the airways safer and fought to win a secure place in the American middle class. It climaxes with the story of Reagan and the controllers, who surprisingly endorsed the Republican on the promise that he would address their grievances. That brief, fateful alliance triggered devastating miscalculations that changed America, forging patterns that still govern the nation's labor politics. Written with an eye for detail and a grasp of the vast consequences of the PATCO conflict for both air travel and America's working class, Collision Course is a stunning achievement.