Download or read book Letters Home from a B 17 Bomber Pilot in World War II written by Diane Robinson and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters Home from a B-17 Bomber Pilot in World War II By: Diane Robinson Letters Home from a World War II B-17 Bomber Pilot is a collection of letters written by author Diane Robinson’s uncle before he perished in a bombing raid over Brux, Czechoslovakia. His writings demonstrate the courage and bravery of those fighting for our country. Anyone with an interest in World War II will enjoy a personal look into the life of John J. Cunningham as he enters pilot training, his feelings on being a soldier, and his allegiance to his country.
Download or read book Belle of the Brawl written by Gary A Best and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wartime biography follows the life of a Second World War B-17 bombardier from the beginning of the war to its conclusion. Based on the 150 letters the airman, Fred Lull, wrote home to his mother, much of the horrors of what he experienced off the wing of his plane, aircraft destroyed, dismemberment by flak, go unshared. Fred did not want his mother to worry and could not tell her: ‘I noticed some movement and a flash of light out of the corner of my right eye. The plane that had been flying right next to us had exploded and simply disappeared.’ Using the bombardier’s combat flight record, research data and interviews of former B-17 crew members, the story unfolds, breaking through the barrier of an unwillingness and inability to tell loved ones of the smell and taste of war.
Download or read book World War II Dispatches to Akron written by Christopher LaHurd and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bombardier’s story of serving in the skies over Europe—and surviving in a POW camp—as told through his correspondence with his Ohio family. On his twenty-sixth horrifying mission over the hostile skies of Nazi Europe, a charismatic bombardier, seated at the nose of a B-17, strapped on his parachute as his disintegrating bomber dropped uncontrollably to the ground. What got him to this point, the ensuing months behind barbed wire, and his daily letters written to his family in Akron, Ohio, makes for an emotionally intense memoir. This is the true account of a single individual who represents the countless unsung warriors of the greatest generation during World War II. Previously published as A Story of One
Download or read book Homeward Lieutenant written by Robert G. Claar and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in 1943, the 20-year-old author of these letters was inducted into the US Army just as the war in Europe was heating up. Classified as a pilot, he spent the remaining months of that year in flight training in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. The following year, this farmer's son from Bedford County, Pennsylvania found himself "somewhere in England." During three-and-a-half hectic months of 1944 he co-piloted a B-17 Flying Fortress on 35 long bombing missions over heavily defended enemy cities. After his tour with the 385th Bombardment Group, he returned state-side to instruct other pilots-in-training on the B-17 in Tampa, Florida. When the war ended, until his discharge he flew many types of aircraft: the A-6, AT-6, C-47 and L-5, in Texas and Kansas. The letters in this book offer personal glimpses into military life and American life during 3 pivotal years of world history.
Download or read book Cheerio and Best Wishes written by Ralph H. Schneck and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the true story of a young boy from Posey County, Indiana, who had a dream to fly. The outbreak of World War II enabled him to fulfill that dream. Cheerio and Best Wishes is told entirely through the letters he wrote to his family and friends. Detailed narrative and commentary provide explanation and background information.One hundred thirty-eight letters are presented in this book. It is highly unusual to find this many letters from one person, curated by his family and recently rediscovered by his son, along with carefully created photograph albums. The story starts in rural southern Indiana and follows the young volunteer as he goes westward to California and New Mexico to be trained to fly bombers. From the United States, he travels via South America and North Africa to England and deploys with the Eighth Air Force. The accounts of his journeys and experiences are detailed, ranging from entertaining to spine-tingling. Moments of high drama intermingle with the mundane nature of war.Together the letters and pictures in this book (the originals are now preserved for posterity in the Purdue University Flight Archives) offer a comprehensive and cohesive story of how US airmen were prepared and trained for war, and detail the daily experience of a bomber pilot flying missions over Germany. The letters of one young flyer reflect the experience of thousands of Americans who volunteered to go to war in the 1940s. His experiences were those of a generation.
Download or read book Dear Mother and Daddy written by Marie Mountain Clark and published by . This book was released on 2021-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiography of Marie Mountain Clark, a member of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II. Reprinted edition.
Download or read book Dear Mom written by Robert J. Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised by their single mother and grandmother and living on the minimum wage, two brothers became pilots in WWII. One flew B-17 bombers; the other flew P-47 and P-51 fighters. Both were killed in action. Prolific letter writers, the brothers wrote more than 200 letters to their mother between 1942 and 1945 describing their new adventures in their ever more dangerous world. In these letters, discovered many years later by her grandson, you will see in a very personal way the war a mother saw as presented to her by her sons. Not a technical description of military tactics, battles, and jargon, the letters instead create a simple yet profound human interest story of a small, close knit American family torn apart by the reality of war. You'll read of both the loneliness and excitement they felt being away from home for the first time, see them grow from awestruck boys when they first observe military planes up close to confident pilots of the fastest and largest planes in the AAF. You will even take a ride on a dangerous combat mission. You will find out about their frustrations, perseverance, humor, courage, and relationships. But mostly you will see how two brothers with totally different personalities, reflected even in the types of planes they flew, shared a common bond of love for their mother that was unshakable. When the letters stop, you will get to read the dreaded telegrams from the War Department that took their place. And finally you get to actually hear from their mother as she describes her worst fears and the ultimate tragedy with which she was confronted as the horror of war came home to her, not once but twice. Besides the letters, there is a section of very dramatic eyewitness accounts explaining what happened to the brothers on each of their final missions. There is also a brief biographical sketch of the women who loved them and were left behind. The book is enhanced with numerous pictures with descriptive captions. For WWII aviation buffs there is a detailed list of the types of aircraft each brother trained on, including the hours and specific training facility.
Download or read book A Bomber Pilot S Story written by Robert P. Neilson and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flying a B-17 Flying Fortress with the Fifteenth Air Force out of Foggia, Italy, Lt. George H. Neilson describes the harrowing experiences of his twenty-eight combat missions as well as the ups and downs of life in the US Army Air Corps from enlistment to discharge (194345). Blending selections of his fathers letters to home and memoirs he recorded a half century later with documented background history, the younger Neilson tells the saga of the son of a Boston widow as he confronts the rigors of pilot-officer training and combat service in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations during the final six months of World War II in Europe. George depicts the humorous and mundane sides of army life as well as the terror-filled moments during bomb runs over targets in Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Austria as antiaircraft flak bursts battered the aircraft. Neilsons daily chronicles juxtapose moments when life and death hung in the balance, such as when he landed his crippled Fort in the Adriatic Sea, with the unexpected moments of splendor, such as when he dined in luxury on the Isle of Capri at a castle owned by the royal family of Italy. Flying in formation through clouds so thick that the plane thirty feet off his wing was invisible, George received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his ability as a skilled instrument pilot. He recounts youthful escapades on duty-free hours and the tales of life in Foggias mud-bound tent city in the spur of Italy. It includes the stirring story of his visit to a field hospital where his brother, a captain in the infantry, was recovering from a bullet wound incurred in the fighting in the Apennine Mountain campaign. Finally, the story tells of World War IIs fiery end and how he unknowingly worked on the secret research project to develop the atomic bomb in a lab at MIT before enlistment. For the student of history and aviation and its role in the Allied victory over Hitlers nefarious Reich, this microhistory will not disappoint.
Download or read book Dear Mom written by Robert J. Taylor and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised by their single mother and grandmother and living on the minimum wage, two brothers became pilots in WWII. One flew B-17 bombers; the other flew P-47 and P-51 fighters. Both were killed in action. Prolific letter writers, the brothers wrote more than 200 letters to their mother between 1942 and 1945 describing their new adventures in their ever more dangerous world. In these letters, discovered many years later by her grandson, you will see in a very personal way the war a mother saw as presented to her by her sons. Not a technical description of military tactics, battles, and jargon, the letters instead create a simple yet profound human interest story of a small, close knit American family torn apart by the reality of war. You'll read of both the loneliness and excitement they felt being away from home for the first time, see them grow from awestruck boys when they first observe military planes up close to confident pilots of the fastest and largest planes in the AAF. You will even take a ride on a dangerous combat mission. You will find out about their frustrations, perseverance, humor, courage, and relationships. But mostly you will see how two brothers with totally different personalities, reflected even in the types of planes they flew, shared a common bond of love for their mother that was unshakable. When the letters stop, you will get to read the dreaded telegrams from the War Department that took their place. And finally you get to actually hear from their mother as she describes her worst fears and the ultimate tragedy with which she was confronted as the horror of war came home to her, not once but twice. Besides the letters, there is a section of very dramatic eyewitness accounts explaining what happened to the brothers on each of their final missions. There is also a brief biographical sketch of the women who loved them and were left behind. The book is enhanced with numerous pictures with descriptive captions. For WWII aviation buffs there is a detailed list of the types of aircraft each brother trained on, including the hours and specific training facility.
Download or read book Letters Home written by Nan Snow and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This World War II memoir recounts the life of Floyd Hughes Davis as he trains as a member of a B-17 aircraft, his boming missions over Germany, and explores the mysterious circumstances around the loss of his entire crew.
Download or read book Letters Home written by Greg Metcalf and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rex and Kate, just married, part when Rex ships out as a member of the inaugural crew of the USS Shangrila, bomber pilot for the U.S. Navy, fighting in the Pacific theater against the Japanese during WWII. They make a lovers' pact to write each other every day. This romantic gesture, these letters home, become more and more vital as the distance between them widens, as the months slowly pass. As he waits out the big three: the war's end, word of his wife's delivery of their first child, and his coming home, his letters reveal a man struggling to boost his wife's morale by assuring her of his safe return while shielding her from the bitter effects of his experience of war. And on July 23, 1945, the SBC2 dive bomber Rex pilots is hit by anti-aircraft fire during an attack at Kure, forcing him to crash land in the Pacific. He misses writing one day and then returns to telling his story in letters home.
Download or read book Casey the Flying Fortress written by Mark Farina and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of a young man from Chicago who becomes a copilot of a bomber in Europe during World War IIfrom training, to the assembly of his B-17 crew, the mens struggles after becoming prisoners of war, and the discovery some sixty years later of details his surviving family and fellow crew members never knew.
Download or read book Belle of the Brawl written by Gary A Best and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wartime biography follows the life of a Second World War B-17 bombardier from the beginning of the war to its conclusion. Based on the 150 letters the airman, Fred Lull, wrote home to his mother, much of the horrors of what he experienced off the wing of his plane, aircraft destroyed, dismemberment by flak, go unshared. Fred did not want his mother to worry and could not tell her: 'I noticed some movement and a flash of light out of the corner of my right eye. The plane that had been flying right next to us had exploded and simply disappeared.' Using the bombardier's combat flight record, research data and interviews of former B-17 crew members, the story unfolds, breaking through the barrier of an unwillingness and inability to tell loved ones of the smell and taste of war.
Download or read book Dear Mother and Daddy written by Marie Mountain Clark and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters from a WWII WASP pilot home to her family during the period of her service, and autobiographical memoir.
Download or read book Flying against Fate written by S. P. MacKenzie and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were high. Of the roughly 125,000 who served as aircrew with Bomber Command, 59,423 were killed or missing and presumed killed—a fatality rate of 45.5%. With odds like that, it would be no surprise if there were as few atheists in cockpits as there were in foxholes; and indeed, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in Flying against Fate, a pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II. Mining a wealth of documents as well as a trove of published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, MacKenzie examines the myriad forms combat fliers' superstitions assumed, from jinxes to premonitions. Most commonly, airmen carried amulets or talismans—lucky boots or a stuffed toy; a coin whose year numbers added up to thirteen; counterintuitively, a boomerang. Some performed rituals or avoided other acts, e.g., having a photo taken before a flight. Whatever seemed to work was worth sticking with, and a heightened risk often meant an upsurge in superstitious thought and behavior. MacKenzie delves into behavior analysis studies to help explain the psychology behind much of the behavior he documents—not slighting the large cohort of crew members and commanders who demurred. He also looks into the ways in which superstitious behavior was tolerated or even encouraged by those in command who saw it as a means of buttressing morale. The first in-depth exploration of just how varied and deeply felt superstitious beliefs were to tens of thousands of combat fliers, Flying against Fate expands our understanding of a major aspect of the psychology of war in the air and of World War II.
Download or read book Shot Down written by Steve Snyder and published by Sea Breeze Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2015 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shot Down is about author Steve Snyder¿s father, Howard Snyder, the ten man crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth, and the unique experiences of each man after their plane was knocked out of the sky by German fighters over the French/Belgium border on February 8, 1944. Some men died. Some were captured and became prisoners of war. Some evaded the Germans for awhile but were betrayed, captured, and shot. Some men evaded capture and were missing in action for seven months. The stories are all different and are all remarkable. Through personal letters, oral and written accounts, military records, and interviews ¿ all from people who took part of the events that happened 70 years ago, the stories of the crewmen come alive. Further enhancing their stories are more than 200 time period photographs of the people who were involved and the places where the events took place. Even before the dramatic battle in the air and the subsequent harrowing events on the ground, the story is informative, insightful, and captivating. Prior to the fateful event on February 8, the book covers the men¿s training, their journey to England, life while stationed there, and numerous combat missions. Everything is centered around the 306th Bomb Group stationed at Thurleigh, England of which the crew of the Susan Ruth was a part. To add background and context, many historical facts about the war are entwined throughout the book so that the reader has a feel for and understanding of what was occurring on a broader scale. Thus, it is a fascinating account about brave individuals, featuring pilot Howard Snyder, set within the compelling events of the war in Europe. You will be given an insider¿s seat to the drama surrounding a remarkable group of young airmen and the courageous Belgian people who risked their lives to help them.
Download or read book Air Corps News Letter written by and published by . This book was released on 1943 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
