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 A Wing and a Prayer written by Harry H. Crosby and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A compelling account of the air war against Germany” written by the navigator portrayed by Anthony Boyle in Apple TV’s Masters of the Air (Publishers Weekly). They began operations out of England in the spring of ’43. They flew their Flying Fortresses almost daily against strategic targets in Europe in the name of freedom. Their astonishing courage and appalling losses earned them the name that resounds in the annals of aerial warfare and made the “Bloody Hundredth” a legend. Harry H. Crosby—depicted in the miniseries Masters of the Air developed by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg—arrived with the very first crews, and left with the very last. After dealing with his fear and gaining in skill and confidence, he was promoted to Group Navigator, surviving hairbreadth escapes and eluding death while leading thirty-seven missions, some of them involving two thousand aircraft. Now, in a breathtaking and often humorous account, he takes us into the hearts and minds of these intrepid airmen to experience both the triumph and the white-knuckle terror of the war in the skies. “Affecting . . . A vivid account . . . Uncommonly thoughtful recollections that address the moral ambiguities of a great cause without in any way denigrating the selfless valor or camaraderie that helped ennoble it.” —Kirkus Reviews “Re-creates for us the sense of how it was when European skies were filled with noise and danger, when the fate of millions hung in the balance. An evocative and excellent memoir.” —Library Journal “The acrid stench of fear and cordite, the coal burning stoves, the heroics, the losses . . . This has to be the best memoir I have read, bar none.” —George Hicks, director of the Airmen Memorial Museum

Download or read book Master of the Air written by Robert A. Slayton and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the western Allies moved to consolidate their areas of control in occupied Germany, the USSR responded by cutting off land access to West Berlin, holding over two million residents of that city hostage in an aggressive act of brinkmanship. General William Henry Tunner was given a task that seemed doomed to failure--to supply a major city by air with everything it needed to survive from food to a winter's supply of coal--and made it a brilliant success, astonishing the world in a major public relations defeat for the Soviets, and demonstrating the unexpected capacity of air fleets in a postwar world.

Download or read book Command Of The Air written by General Giulio Douhet and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the pantheon of air power spokesmen, Giulio Douhet holds center stage. His writings, more often cited than perhaps actually read, appear as excerpts and aphorisms in the writings of numerous other air power spokesmen, advocates-and critics. Though a highly controversial figure, the very controversy that surrounds him offers to us a testimonial of the value and depth of his work, and the need for airmen today to become familiar with his thought. The progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to the breadth of his vision. Douhet, together with Hugh “Boom” Trenchard of Great Britain and William “Billy” Mitchell of the United States, is justly recognized as one of the three great spokesmen of the early air power era. This reprint is offered in the spirit of continuing the dialogue that Douhet himself so perceptively began with the first edition of this book, published in 1921. Readers may well find much that they disagree with in this book, but also much that is of enduring value. The vital necessity of Douhet’s central vision-that command of the air is all important in modern warfare-has been proven throughout the history of wars in this century, from the fighting over the Somme to the air war over Kuwait and Iraq.

Download or read book When Breath Becomes Air written by Paul Kalanithi and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Download or read book The Bomber Boys written by Travis L. Ayres and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True tales of heroism and the men who fought and died in the skies of World War II Europe. In World War II, there were all too many ways for a fighting man to die. But no theater of operations offered more fatal choices than the skies above Nazi-occupied Europe. Inside of a B-17 Bomber, thousands of feet above the earth, death was always a moment away. From the hellish storms of enemy flak and relentless strafing of Luftwaffe fighters, to mid-air collisions, mechanical failure, and simple bad luck, it’s a wonder any man would volunteer for such dangerous duty. But some very brave men did. Some paid the ultimate price. Some made it home. But in the end, all would achieve victory. Here, author Travis L. Ayres has gathered a collection of previously untold personal accounts of combat and camaraderie aboard the B-17 Bombers that flew countless sorties against the enemy, as related by the men who lived and fought in the air—and survived. They are stories of heroism, sacrifice, miraculous survival and merciless warfare. But they should all be remembered... INCLUDES PHOTOS

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 Bomber Command written by Max Hastings and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This award-winning classic of WWII military history chronicles the Royal Air Force’s bombing campaign against Germany. RAF Bomber Command’s air offensive against the cities of Nazi Germany was one of the most epic campaigns of World War II. The struggle began meekly in 1939 with only a few aircraft—Whitleys, Hampdens, and Wellingtons—flying blindly through the night on their ill-conceived bombing runs. It ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes, equipped with the best of British wartime technology, blazing whole German cities in a single night. In Bomber Command, originally published to critical acclaim in the UK, famed British military historian Sir Max Hastings offers a captivating analysis of the strategy and decision-making behind one of World War II’s most violent episodes. With firsthand descriptions of the experiences of aircrew from 1939 to 1945—based on one hundred interviews with veterans—and a harrowing narrative of the experiences of Germans on the ground during the September 1944 bombing of Darmstadt, Bomber Command is widely recognized as a classic account of one of the bloodiest campaigns in World War II history. Winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize

Download or read book Over the Hump written by William H. Tunner and published by New York : Duell, Sloan and Pearce. This book was released on 1964 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William Henry Tunner (July 14, 1906 - April 6, 1983) was a general officer in the United States Air Force and its predecessor, the United States Army Air Forces. Tunner was known for his expertise in the command of large-scale military airlift operations, first in Air Transport Command (ATC) during World War II, commanding The Hump operation, and later in Military Air Transport Service (MATS) during the Berlin Airlift in 1949-1951. He eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant general and commanded MATS itself."--Wikipedia, 10 November 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Tunner

Download or read book Master of Airpower written by David Mets and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A valuable and long-overdue biography of one of America’s greatest soldiers.”—Parameters The story of Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz’s life is more than a biography of one of America’s great military leaders. It is a history of the development of airpower, and a fascinating, inside look at the long, difficult struggle to win autonomy for the U.S. Air Force. Spaatz earned his wings in 1918, when flying was a new and dangerous occupation; aviation school mortality rates were 18 percent. After gaining experience as a fighter pilot during the “Great War,” he became one of the Air Corps’ top pursuit commanders during the 1920s. During the 1930s, he moved over to bombers just as modern, long range aircraft were coming into service. As a senior bomber commander, Spaatz significantly influenced the emerging strategic bomber doctrine. By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, Spaatz was one of America’s most experienced aviators. He was at the helm of the evolution of the new American military “strategic airpower” doctrine, which proved to be a decisive factor in World War II. After the Allied victory, planning and launching an independent Air Force would occupy Spaatz for the remainder of his career. Today’s Air Force bears his indelible stamp. “Tooey” Spaatz was a low-profile leader who was known for his open mind and pragmatic approach, and who was influential in a quiet, forceful way. Possessed of absolute integrity, even when his beliefs were unpopular, he pressed them at the risk of his career.

Download or read book Carl A Spaatz and the Air War in Europe written by Richard G. Davis and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first detailed examination of the career of the highest-ranking U.S. Army Air Forces officer in Europe during World War II.

Download or read book Race of Aces written by John R Bruning and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing untold story of the WWII airmen who risked it all in the deadly race to become the greatest American fighter pilot. In 1942, America's deadliest fighter pilot, or "ace of aces" -- the legendary Eddie Rickenbacker -- offered a bottle of bourbon to the first U.S. fighter pilot to break his record of twenty-six enemy planes shot down. Seizing on the challenge to motivate his men, General George Kenney promoted what they would come to call the "race of aces" as a way of boosting the spirits of his war-weary command. What developed was a wild three-year sprint for fame and glory, and the chance to be called America's greatest fighter pilot. The story has never been told until now. Based on new research and full of revelations, John Bruning's brilliant, original book tells the story of how five American pilots contended for personal glory in the Pacific while leading Kenney's resurgent air force against the most formidable enemy America ever faced. The pilots -- Richard Bong, Tommy McGuire, Neel Kearby, Charles MacDonald and Gerald Johnson -- riveted the nation as they contended for Rickenbacker's crown. As their scores mounted, they transformed themselves from farm boys and aspiring dentists into artists of the modern dogfight. But as the race reached its climax, some of the pilots began to see how the spotlight warped their sense of duty. They emerged as leaders, beloved by their men as they chose selfless devotion over national accolades. Teeming with action all across the vast Pacific theater, Race of Aces is a fascinating exploration of the boundary between honorable duty, personal glory, and the complex landscape of the human heart. "Brings you into the cockpit of the lethal, fast-paced world of fighter pilots . . . Fascinating." -- Sara Vladic"Extraordinary . . . a must-read." -- US Navy Captain Dan Pedersen"A heart-pounding narrative of the courage, sacrifice, and tragedy of America's elite fighter pilots." -- James M. Scott"Vivid and gripping . . . Confirms Bruning's status as the premier war historian of the air." -- Saul David

Download or read book The Master of the World written by Jules Verne and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witness a thrilling tale of innovation and suspense in 'The Master of the World', a masterpiece by renowned visionary Jules Verne. As his health wanes, Verne weaves a tale of darkness and apprehension, highlighting the ominous specter of despots like the formidable Robur and the looming threat of totalitarianism. Against the backdrop of a perplexing summer in 1903, the Eastern United States becomes a playground for inexplicable phenomena, propelled by unseen forces. Enter John Strock, a dedicated federal inspector, as he embarks on a relentless pursuit of answers amidst the enigmatic Blue Ridge Mountains. Unleashing his revolutionary creation, the awe-inspiring Terror, Robur becomes both a target and an enigma, challenging Strock's determination and shaping their fates in a cataclysmic clash of wills.

Download or read book The Story of World War II written by Donald L. Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-08 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought—and whose outcome was in greater doubt—than readers might imagine. This is the war that Americans at the home front would have read about had they had access to the previously censored testimony of the soldiers on which Miller builds his gripping narrative. Miller covers the entire war—on land, at sea, and in the air—and provides new coverage of the brutal island fighting in the Pacific, the bomber war over Europe, the liberation of the death camps, and the contributions of African Americans and other minorities. He concludes with a suspenseful, never-before-told story of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, based on interviews with the men who flew the mission that ended the war.

Download or read book The Next War in the Air written by Brett Holman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.

Download or read book The Air Merchant written by Alexander Belyaev and published by TSK Group LLC. This book was released on 2024-03-06 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine if one man devised a way to gain control of one vital resource no one can live without. What would you do then?

Download or read book Prisoner of the Swiss written by Daniel Culler and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-08-19 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A harrowing memoir revealing the horrors that occurred within a little-known prison camp in Switzerland, by a POW who survived it. During WWII, 1,517 members of US aircrews were forced to seek asylum in Switzerland. Most neutral countries found reason to release US airmen from internment, but Switzerland took its obligations under the Hague Convention more seriously than most. The airmen were often incarcerated in local jails, then transferred to prison camps. The worst of these camps was Wauwilermoos, where at least 161 US airmen were sent for the honorable offense of escaping. To this hellhole came Dan Culler, the author of this incredible account of suffering and survival. Prisoners slept on lice-infested straw, were malnourished, and had virtually no hygiene facilities or access to medical care. But worse, the commandant of Wauwilermoos was a diehard Swiss Nazi. He allowed the mainly criminal occupants of the camp to torture and rape Dan Culler with impunity. After many months of such treatment, starving and ravaged by disease, he was finally aided by a British officer. Betrayal dominated his cruel fate—by the American authorities, by the Swiss, and, in a last twist, in a second planned escape that turned out to be a trap. But Dan Culler’s courage and determination kept him alive. Finally making it back home, he found he had been abandoned again. Political expediency meant there was no such place as Wauwilermoos. He had never been there, so he had never been a POW and didn‘t qualify for any POW benefits or medical or mental treatment for his many physical and emotional wounds. His struggle to make his peace with his past forms the final part of the story. An introduction and notes from military historian Rob Morris provide historical background and context, including recent efforts to recognize the suffering of those incarcerated in Switzerland and afford them full POW status.