Download or read book Diary of a Tailgunner written by Ronald Costello and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about my experiences as a Tailgunner on a B-29 in Korea, during the Korean war. I am hopeing that it will give an insite to what this war was about. Although people call it a conflict, we as veterans of this conflict think otherwise, we believe it was a war. Come ride along with me on some 27 combat missions over North Korea. Venture into the night life on a B-29 at 29,000 ft. over the mountains of Korea, see the snow covered barron lands, hoping that we don't end up there..It also covers a little about my growing up and how I became a tailgunner, the extensive training it takes to become a crew member. Enjoy the book, I am sure you will

Download or read book Diary of a Tailgunner written by Ronald Costello and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about my experiences as a Tailgunner on a B-29 in Korea, during the Korean war. I am hopeing that it will give an insite to what this war was about. Although people call it a conflict, we as veterans of this conflict think otherwise, we believe it was a war. Come ride along with me on some 27 combat missions over North Korea. Venture into the night life on a B-29 at 29,000 ft. over the mountains of Korea, see the snow covered barron lands, hoping that we don't end up there..It also covers a little about my growing up and how I became a tailgunner, The extensive training it takes to become a crew member. Enjoy the book, I am sure you will

Download or read book Fifty Missions Over Europe written by Stanley Miszewski and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book I Wanted Wings written by Gary R. Hill and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Think about how much safer and relaxed you would feel if you knew what to expect from a relationship-before you got into one. In this book I lay open my experiences from what I feel God revealed to me about falling in love. A thriving growing relationship which enters into marriage waits within these pages. Where hands are still held within the revealed depths of love long after courtship, there is stability in behavior which promotes consistent growth. "As the bridegroom rejoices in His bride, so does the Lord rejoice in you." At last a pattern to behold and live for a full life.

Download or read book Wing Ding written by Gene T. Carson and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is no run-of-the-mill WWII book. It is the exciting story of a cook in the Army Air Corps. It tells of his unauthorized move from the kitchen to life as an aerial gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress in the unfriendly skies of Europe in 1943 to 1945. You will laugh cry and share in his life as he fights for his country while snatching moments of relief and love between missions. For those who were there it will bring back memories. For others, it will tell what it was like for grandfathers, fathers and uncles.

Download or read book The Tail Gunner written by Stephanie Lile and published by . This book was released on 2014-09-14 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen-year-old Sylvie Stevens is the young tail gunner's only hope. He will never rest, never move on, unless she helps him complete his final mission. The two meet as Bish's spirit rises from the ashes of a burning photograph, demanding that Sylvie is his conduit. Terrified yet intrigued, Sylvie learns to use her till-then-unknown abilities to tap Bish's memories to see, and help heal, the deeper agony of his wartime past. There, intertwined with the horrors of war is also haunting heartbreak. As the two journey through time and place using objects from Bish's wartime treasures as transmitters, Sylvie discovers a deeper connection to Bish, one that unravels everything she ever thought she knew and held dear in her family. Her mission grows to include her ailing grandmother and the need to reconnect her with a love long lost--never mind that that love lives in another dimension.An adventure that spans the globe from Seattle to Italy, and time from the 21st century to the 1940s, The Tail Gunner reveals the both the joy and pain of life, love, and death that comes to soon. Infused with both humor and heartache, this story is for anyone who believes in the extraordinary power of love.

Download or read book Memories from the Out House Mouse written by and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The following are the combined personal diaries of the last World War II combat flight crew of the Boeing B-17-F Flying Fortress named "Out House Mouse". Each of these diaries has been transcribed from the original or from a first generation copy of the original provided to me by the crewmember or his immediate family. My father was 1Lt. E.J. ("Joe") Harvey, the pilot on this crew and it was the transcription of his diary that began this project. Lt. Harvey's notes were hand-printed in block capital letters and an effort has been made to retain that personality in this transcription. For each combat mission, Lt.Harvey also included carefully cut and folded newspaper accounts, which have also been transcribed and where possible, the source newspaper identified. An effort has been made to duplicate the newsprint type, column size and position as much as possible to retain the look of his original diary. From his diary, I learned the names of the other members of his crew and their hometown at that time. Using that information, I've been able to locate all the members of the crew or their family. Six others have provided me with copies of their diary for which I am most grateful and I have included transcriptions of these diaries in this combined record. Because Lt. Harvey provided an entry for every day, even when not flying, and because his diary covers the greatest period of time, from the first of January through the middle of June 1945, his diary provides the date stamp and serves as the basis for all of the other records. This combined chronological record includes the seven available records of all 9 members of this last combat crew of the "Out House Mouse". Thus, this record includes the diary of 2Lt. Phil Darby, the co-pilot, provided by Mr. Darby; the diary of 2Lt. Marty Raber, the bombardier who actually sent me his original diary and his scrapbook for my use in preparing this book; the diary of 2Lt. Paul Katz, the navigator for the crew, provided by his wife, Joan Katz; the diary of S/Sgt Niel C. Jorgenson, the crew's flight engineer, which has been provided by his daughter, Ms. Susan Lunt who also provided the computer scans of the photographs of the flight crew and their signatures at the beginning of this book. The remaining records are the "Mission Sheets" of the ball turret gunner, S/Sgt George H. Odenwaller and the diary of the tail-gunner S/Sgt Walter M. Limberger. Both of these gentlemen provided me with a hand-written reproduction of their diary. The last record of course is that of Lt. Harvey from which all of this has grown. Following the entries of the pilot and co-pilot, the entries from the other five diaries are arranged in a nose-to-tail order of that crewmember's position aboard the "Out House Mouse". Each of these records is separated from the others by a break line (----) with each contributing member identified. In addition, the individual contributions also use a different type font. A sincere effort has been made to replicate the handwriting and format the diarist used in each of the original records. For example, while most of the diary authors established a format for reporting the specific important facts of their missions and recorded these facts in hand-printed letters, Paul Katz wrote his diary in long-hand using a narrative style and addressed it to his wife, Joan. Consequently, for Lt. Katz, I chose a script font to replicate the transcription of his diary. "Mission days" are preceded by a small pilot's wing prior to the diary date and conclude with the transcription of the newspaper account (or accounts) that Lt. Harvey had so carefully cut, folded, and pasted into his diary. Photographs from these articles have been electronically scanned and reproduced here.

Download or read book Tail End Charlies written by John Nichol and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Night after night they stifled their fears and flew through flak and packs of enemy fighters to drop the bombs that would demolish the Third Reich. The airmen of the United States 8th Army Air ForceAmerican and British Bomber Command were among the greatest heroes of the Second World War, defying Hitler in the darkest early days of the war and taking the battle to the German homeland when no one else would. Toward the end of the conflict, too, they continued to sacrifice their lives to shatter an enemy sworn never to surrender. Blasted out of the sky in an instant or bailing out from burning aircraft to drop helplessly into hostile hands, they would die in their tens of thousands to ensure the enemy's defeat. Especially vulnerable were the "tail-end Charlies"---for the Americans, which meant two things: the gunners who flew countless missions in a plexiglass bubble at the back of the bomber, and the last bomber in the formation who ended up flying through the most hell, and for the British, the rear-gunners who flew operations in a Plexiglas bubble at the back of the bomber. Following their groundbreaking revelations about the ordeals suffered by Allied prisoners of war in their bestselling book, The Last Escape, John Nichol and Tony Rennell tell the astonishing and deeply moving story of the controversial last battles in the skies of Germany through the eyes of the forgotten heroes who fought them. "This is the best account that has been written of the heroic American and British bomber crews . . . the best of its kind." ---George McGovern "Rivaling the best of Stephen Ambrose's work, Tail-End Charlies gives a breathtakingly intimate look at the lives, loves, and deaths of the brave airmen of the greatest generation. This fascinating book is as valuable for its stories of joyous life on the ground as it is for its sobering tales of death in the air. You see the whole picture of the war here from the eyes of the strong young men who fought it." ---Walter J. Boyne, bestselling author of Beyond the Wild Blue "Adds new dimensions to the saga of the air war in Europe. The eyewitness accounts, reported within the context of the battle against Nazi Germany, provide a sense of the ordeals, the terror, the gore, and the heroism of ordinary men thrust into the savagery of aerial combat." ---Gerald Astor, author of The Mighty Eighth

Download or read book The Tail Gunner written by Stephanie Lile and published by Bering Street Books. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tragic romance across time and place, this novel chronicles the story of 17-year-old Sylvie Bishop and her efforts to help the ghost of a WWII bomber boy set right his wartime wrongs.

Download or read book Masters of the Air written by Donald L. Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-09-25 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler's doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes readers on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people. Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller's Air Force band, which toured U.S. air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers. In 1943, an American bomber crewman stood only a one-in-five chance of surviving his tour of duty, twenty-five missions. The Eighth Air Force lost more men in the war than the U.S. Marine Corps. The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America -- white America, anyway. (African-Americans could not serve in the Eighth Air Force except in a support capacity.) The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the "King of Hollywood," Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland. Strategic bombing did not win the war, but the war could not have been won without it. American airpower destroyed the rail facilities and oil refineries that supplied the German war machine. The bombing campaign was a shared enterprise: the British flew under the cover of night while American bombers attacked by day, a technique that British commanders thought was suicidal. Masters of the Air is a story, as well, of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed. Drawn from recent interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, Masters of the Air is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world's first and only bomber war.

Download or read book Working Americans 1880 1999 Americans at war written by Scott Derks and published by Universal Reference Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each volume in the widely-successful Working Americans series focuses on a particular type of American and illustrates what life was like for that group from the 1800s to the present time. The volumes are arranged into decade-long chapters, each introduci

Download or read book Saipan the War Diary of John Ciardi c written by John Ciardi and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Aviation Historical Society Journal written by American Aviation Historical Society and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gothic Line 1944 45 written by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the history of how the mighty Gothic Line was defeated by American air power, in one of the most pivotal but least-known air campaigns of World War II. By late 1944, the Italian Campaign was secondary to the campaigns in France, and Allied forces were not strong enough to break the Germans' mighty Gothic Line. These fortifications were supplied by rail through the Alps, with trains arriving hourly and delivering 600,000 tons of supplies a month, enough to keep the German Army going forever. But in the bitter winter of 1944–45, the mighty Gothic Line would be defeated by American air power in one of the most pivotal but least-known air campaigns of World War II. It would not be a direct assault; instead Operation Bingo would ruthlessly cut the Germans' supply lines and leave them starved. However, it would not be easy. The rail routes were defended by a formidable array of heavy flak, and every raid was expected. Conditions were freezing, and even in electric flying suits, men suffered both hypoxia and frostbite. By the end of February, the previous eight-hour rail journey took the Germans 3-4 days on the wrecked railroad, and soon supplies were barely enough to keep the army alive. On April 12, the Allied ground attack began, and within ten days the German command in Northern Italy sued for surrender, the first German force in Europe to do so. Packed with first-hand accounts and rare photos from the 57th Bomb Wing Archives, this book is a fascinating history of the most successful US battlefield interdiction campaign in history, immortalized in the writing of bombardier Joseph Heller, in his novel Catch 22.

Download or read book America History and Life written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

Download or read book Dead Before Dawn written by Frank Broome and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2008-09-22 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank Broome was a 15 year old schoolboy when he experienced the three major blitzes in his home city of Coventry and at the age of 17 volunteered for the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1942 for pilot training. This autobiography, based on his copious diary entries and log books traces his pilot training in the UK, Canada and the USA where he flew single and twin-engined aircraft. Despite his almost perfect training record he, like many of his fellow trainees at this time, was not to gain his R.A.F. wings. There was a shortage of air crew, other than pilots, and Frank eventually transferred to an air-gunnery course. On his return to the UK he undertook operational crew training on Wellington as a tail gunner and made operational training sorties over enemy territory shortly after the D-Day landings. His crew then converted to four-engined heavy bombers first the Halifax and then the Lancaster. He gives first-hand detailed accounts of the many missions during his tour with No. 626 Squadron during the height of Bomber Commands massed raids over Germany and occupied Europe. Excitement abounds with narrow squeaks from enemy night-fighters, radar directed anti-aircraft fire and other hazards of this most dangerous task. He eventually flew with two Wing Commanders and a Squadron Leader with crews who gained several gallantry awards. His book is written with a skill that portrays the dangers inherent in his task, the humor of service life and the sound reasons why his generation were proud to fly with Bomber Command.

Download or read book Big Week written by James Holland and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of World War II’s Operation Argument in which US and British air forces led a series of raids against Nazi Germany in 1944. During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Their goal: to smash the main factories and production centers of the Luftwaffe while also drawing German planes into an aerial battle of attrition to neutralize the Luftwaffe as a fighting force prior to the cross-channel invasion, planned for a few months later. Officially called Operation Argument, this aerial offensive quickly became known as “Big Week,” and it was one of the turning-point engagements of World War II. In Big Week, acclaimed World War II historian James Holland chronicles the massive air battle through the experiences of those who lived and died during it. Prior to Big Week, the air forces on both sides were in crisis. Allied raids into Germany were being decimated, but German resources—fuel and pilots—were strained to the breaking point. Ultimately new Allied aircraft—especially the American long-range P-51 Mustang—and superior tactics won out during Big Week. Through interviews, oral histories, diaries, and official records, Holland follows the fortunes of pilots, crew, and civilians on both sides, taking readers from command headquarters to fighter cockpits to anti-aircraft positions and civilian chaos on the ground, vividly recreating the campaign as it was conceived and unfolded. In the end, the six days of intense air battles largely cleared the skies of enemy aircraft when the invasion took place on June 6, 1944—D-Day. Big Week is both an original contribution to WWII literature and a brilliant piece of narrative history, recapturing a largely forgotten campaign that was one of the most critically important periods of the entire war. Praise for Big Week An Amazon Best Book of the Year “With the aid of diaries, memoirs and his own interviews, Mr. Holland gives a detailed, crewman’s-eye view of combat from inside the British, American and German aircraft during the months leading up to Big Week and during the week itself. For those hoping for war-movie stuff, rest assured that the enemy fighters do come in at 6 o’clock, the guns do hammer, the sun does glint and the ‘chutes do blossom in the sky. Still it’s a serious and important story as well as a dramatic one, and Mr. Holland tells it with verve and authority.” —David A. Price, Wall Street Journal “Highly detailed. . . . The interplay of personal stories with the broader strategic picture makes this book especially illuminating. . . . A fascinating must-read for World War II aficionados.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)