Download or read book The Last Torpedo Flyers written by Arthur Aldridge and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine you are an RAF torpedo pilot in World War Two, sent on missions so dangerous that you're later likened to the Kamikaze. Suicide wasn't a recognised part of the objective for British airmen, yet some pilots felt they had accepted certain death just by climbing into their cockpits. There were times in 1942 when Arthur Aldridge felt like this. At the age of 19, this courageous young man had quit his studies at Oxford to volunteer for the RAF. He flew his Bristol Beaufort like there was no tomorrow - a realistic assumption, after seeing his best friend die in flames at the end of 1941. Aldridge was awarded a DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) for his bravery on the same strike on a German cargo ship during which he lost a wing tip by flying too close to the deck. He was equally lucky to survive his squadron's chaotic torpedo attack on the giants of Hitler's maritime fleet during the notorious Channel Dash, which saw 40 RAF planes shot down. As 1942 wore on, and the stress became intolerable, Aldridge and his Cockney gunner Bill Carroll held their nerve, and 'Arty' was awarded a Bar to his DFC for sinking two enemy ships off Malta and rescuing a fellow pilot while wounded, as his own Beaufort took four shells. Malta was saved by the skin of its teeth, Rommel denied vital supplies in North Africa, and the course of the war was turned. Aldridge was still only 21 years old. Now both 91, but firm friends as ever, Aldridge and Carroll are two of the last torpedo airmen who deserve their place in history alongside our heroic Spitfire pilots. Their story vividly captures the comradeship that existed between men pushed by war to their very limit.
Download or read book Fortress Islands Malta written by Peter Jacobs and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The introduction of Italy into the Second World War on 10 June 1940 signalled the start of the siege of Malta, and for the next two and a half years the Axis powers did all they could to batter the small island into submission. Maltas defences were initially verging on non-existent but the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, could not give up on the island. Laying at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, where the supply route between Italy and the Axis armies in Libya crossed the Allied sea route between Gibraltar and Alexandria, almost exactly at its mid-point, Malta was strategically too important and held the key to the door of the desert war being fought in North Africa.If Malta could be held then it would allow British forces to maintain an offensive capability in the Mediterranean and prevent Axis supplies from reaching North Africa. But everything needed to fight a campaign people, food, fuel, ammunition, medical stores, aircraft and spares would have to be delivered to Malta in sufficient numbers and on a regular basis. It would take a monumental air and maritime effort just to survive, let alone hit back, and to manage both would require those in command to carefully balance Maltas precious and limited resources. Otherwise, it meant surrender and who knows what the outcome of the Second World War might have been had the island fallen. Here, the accomplished military author Peter Jacobs tells the extraordinary story of the heroic defence and re-supply of the Fortress Island of Malta during the longest siege in British history.Links End Links Author
Download or read book Intrepid Aviators written by Gregory G. Fletcher and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the World War II Pacific naval battle that pitted the USS Intrepid’s naval aviators against Japan’s superbattleship Musashi during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. October 24, 1944: As World War II raged, six young American bombers from Torpedo Squadron 18 were sent on a search-and-destroy mission in the Sibuyan Sea. Their target: the superbattleship Musashi, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The pilots were tasked with preventing the immense enemy warship from inflicting damage on American supply ships. Little did these men know that they had embarked on the opening round of history’s greatest—and last—epic naval battle. Two bomber crews launched in the first wave of attackers were shot out of the sky. Only pilot Will Fletcher survived the crash landing. Adrift at sea, Will made his way to land and escaped into the jungles of the Philippines, where he eluded capture by the Japanese with the help of Filipino guerrillas, whose ranks he joined to fight against their common enemy. Intrepid Aviators is the thrilling true story of these brave bomber pilots, their daring duel with the Musashi, and Will Fletcher’s struggle to survive as a guerrilla soldier. The sinking of Musashi inflicted a crucial blow in the Battle of Leyte Gulf and marked the first time in history that aviators sank a Japanese battleship on the high seas.
Download or read book A Democracy at War written by William L. O'Neill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the bureaucratic mistakes--including poor weapons and strategic blunders--that marked America's entry into World War II, showing how these errors were overcome by the citizens waging the war.
Download or read book Aerospace Yearbook written by and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Aerospace Year Book written by and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book IIHF where Countries Come to Play written by IIHF (Int'l Ice Hockey Federation) and published by Fenn-M&S. This book was released on 2011 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This colossal Guide includes information on every top level event, every IIHF member nation, and, indeed, every player to appear in even a single game since international hockey first took hold in 1920. In all, more than 12,000 players are included, as well as every coach, every referee, every linesman and every stat imaginable. The 2012 IIHF Guide and Record Book is the official and only complete source of information for international hockey. It covers all top-level events from the Olympics to World Championships to junior events, from men's hockey to women's hockey, from 1920 to the past and present seasons. At 640 pages, it contains the scores and standings for every international game and event ever contested, the statistics for every player, coach, and on-ice official in IIHF competition history, and the results and histories of every nation that has ever participated in an IIHF event. Full of information on every aspect of the international game, this is the one and only source fans will need if they are interested in the World Junior Championship, Team Canada, or any other aspect of the international game. With a special section on the World Junior Championships taking place in Alberta this Christmas, this is the most important book hockey fans will need this season.
Download or read book British Future Fiction 1700 1914 Volume 3 written by I F Clarke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set of eight volumes presents the reader with selected primary texts in the genre now generally known as future fiction. The chosen texts are designed to explore the dominant characteristics of the genre and examine how it changed over the 18th and 19th centuries.
Download or read book Power at Sea written by Lisle A. Rose and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Volume 1] Traces the social issues, technological advances, and combative encounters of the international naval race from 1890 through WWI, as the largest industrial nations (U.S, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany) scrambled to secure global markets and empire, using their battleship navies as pawns of power politics"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Exciting Experiences in the Japanese Russian War written by Marshall Everett and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 1530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)
Download or read book The Allies Strike Back 1941 1943 written by James Holland and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume two in this “expert, anecdote-filled, thoroughly entertaining” history of WWII follows The Rise of Germany as the Allied forces turn the tides (Kirkus). James Holland’s The Rise of Germany, the first volume in his War in the West trilogy, was widely praised for his impeccable research and lively narrative. Covering the dawn of World War II, it ended at a point when the Nazi war machine appeared to be unstoppable. Germany had taken Poland and France with shocking speed. London was bombed, and U-boats harried shipping on the Atlantic. But Germany hadn’t actually won the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic. It was not producing airplanes or submarines fast enough. And what looked like victory in Greece and Crete had expended crucial resources in short supply. The Allies Strike Back continues the narrative as Germany’s invasion of Russia unfolds in the east, while in the west, the Americans formally enter the war. In North Africa, following major setbacks at the hands of Rommel, the Allies storm to victory. Meanwhile, the bombing of Germany escalates, aiming to not only destroy the its military, industrial, and economic system, but also relentlessly crush civilian morale. Comprehensive and impeccably researched, “Holland brings a fresh eye to the ebb and flow of the conflict” in this “majestic saga” of 20th century history (Literary Review, UK).
Download or read book A Dawn Like Thunder written by Robert J. Mrazek and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 2008 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the contributions of World War II's Torpedo Squadron Eight traces their role in key U.S. victories at Midway and Guadalcanal, citing the honors achieved, and losses suffered, by its thirty-five members.
Download or read book Flying Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1944-10 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships written by United States. Naval History Division and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An alphabetical arrangement of the ships of the continental and United States Navies, with a historical sketch of each one.
Download or read book Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
