Download or read book War in Pacific Skies written by Charlie Cooper and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2010-11-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paintings by the renowned aviation artist plus “lots of wartime photographs and plenty of entertaining and informative text. . . . absorbing reading” (Aviation History). Climb in to the cockpit of some of America’s most heralded warbirds, like the P-38 that carried Richard Bong to his forty kills, and fly along with Paul Tibitts in the Enola Gay as it makes its final approach on Hiroshima. This lavishly illustrated book covers the most famous air engagements in World War II’s Pacific Theater of Operation in an exquisite and beautiful fusion of art and history. Paintings by acclaimed aviation artist Jack Fellows are supplemented by color maps, previously unpublished photographs, original artwork, and personal accounts.

Download or read book Pacific Air written by David Sears and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an account of the U.S. airmen's roles in the air battles that took place over the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

Download or read book Pacific Skies written by Jerome Klinkowitz and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1941 to 1945 the skies over the Pacific Ocean afforded the broadest arena for battle and the fiercest action of air combat during World War II. It was in the air above the Pacific that America's involvement in the war began. It was in these skies that air power launched from carriers became a new form of engagement and where the war ultimately ended with kamikaze attacks and with atomic bombs dropped over Japan. Throughout the conflict American flyers felt a compelling call to supplement the official news and military reports. In vivid accounts written soon after combat and in reflective memoirs recorded in the years after peace came, both pilots and crew members detailed their stories of the action that occurred in the embattled skies. Their first-person testimonies describe a style of warfare invented at the moment of need and at a time when the outcome was anything but certain. Gathering more than a hundred personal narratives from Americans and from Japanese, Pacific Skies recounts a history of air combat in the Pacific theater. Included are the words of such famous aces and bomber pilots as Joe Foss, Pappy Boyington, Dick Bong, and Curtis Lemay, as well as the words of many rank-and-file airmen. Together their stories express fierce individualism and resourcefulness and convey the vast panorama of war that included the skies over Pearl Harbor, Wake, and Guadalcanal and missions from Saipan and Tinian. As Pacific Skies recounts the perilous lives of pilots in their own words, Jerome Klinkowitz weaves the individual stories into a gripping historical narrative that exposes the shades of truth and fiction that can become blurred over time. A book about experiencing and remembering, Pacific Skies also is a story of unique perspectives on the war.

Download or read book Fire In The Sky written by Eric M Bergerud and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of the Pacific Air War in World War II draws on interviews with surviving veterans of all duties to paint a detailed look at the war in the sky.

Download or read book Fire and Fortitude written by John C. McManus and published by Dutton Caliber. This book was released on 2019 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John C. McManus, one of our most highly-acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor--a rude awakening for a ragtag militia woefully unprepared for war--to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly-desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower."--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Fire In The Sky written by Eric M Bergerud and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of the Pacific Air War in World War II draws on interviews with surviving veterans of all duties to paint a detailed look at the war in the sky.

Download or read book Flyboys written by James Bradley and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic New York Times bestselling story of heroism and sacrifice--by the author of Flags of Our Fathers, The Imperial Cruise, and The China Mirage. This acclaimed bestseller brilliantly illuminates a hidden piece of World War II history as it tells the harrowing true story of nine American airmen shot down in the Pacific. One of them, George H. W. Bush, was miraculously rescued. What happened to the other eight remained a secret for almost 60 years. After the war, the American and Japanese governments conspired to cover up the shocking truth, and not even the families of the airmen were informed of what happened to their sons. Their fate remained a mystery--until now. FLYBOYS is a tale of courage and daring, of war and death, of men and hope. It will make you proud and it will break your heart.

Download or read book Victory in the Pacific written by Michael Green and published by MetroBooks (NY). This book was released on 2000 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the events that unfolded after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Download or read book Pacific Legacy written by Gerald A. Meehi and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic photo book about the battlegrounds of the Pacific Theater then and now—updated with new information about the preservation and accessibility of these historic sites. Pacific Legacy offers an unprecedented record of the relics of World War II that have survived on the islands of the Pacific: American landing craft rusting on the reefs where they were stopped by enemy fire; shell-pocked Japanese fortifications; fallen aircraft overgrown by jungle; packed-coral landing strips still as good as new. These evocative color images are paired with archival photographs that show the same tropical battlegrounds as they appeared in wartime. The text covers the entire war in the Pacific, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay. The principal battles are recounted hour-by-hour, drawing heavily on firsthand accounts. This vivid narrative helps the reader visualize what it was really like to be at war in the Pacific, doggedly island-hopping to victory.

Download or read book Touched with Fire written by Eric M. Bergerud and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-07-01 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant history of the land battles in the Pacific theater of World War II, with stirring personal accounts of the horrifying struggle between the Japanese and Allied forces. The horrors of WWII in the South Pacific extended far beyond the detonation of atomic bombs. In this revelatory portrayal of the lives of the regular infantrymen who struggled to contain the Japanese advance, Eric Bergerud has given us a compelling and chilling record of the incredible hardships endured by these soldiers, and the heroic efforts that resulted in the reversal of the course of the war. Bergerud spent hundreds of hours interviewing the last surviving veterans of this remarkable campaign, and he has placed their personal experiences at the center of his analysis of military strategy. “Aspires to do for the ground war in the South Pacific what Keegan achieved in Six Armies in Normandy.”—Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Dogfight over Tokyo written by John Wukovits and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an expert in the Pacific theater of World War II comes the tragic story of the pilots who fought the last fight of the war during the first hour of peace When Billy Hobbs and his fellow Hellcat aviators from Air Group 88 lifted off from the venerable Navy carrier USS Yorktown early on the morning of August 15, 1945, they had no idea they were about to carry out the final air mission of World War II. Two hours later, Yorktown received word from Admiral Nimitz that the war had ended and that all offensive operations should cease. As they were turning back, twenty Japanese planes suddenly dove from the sky above them and began a ferocious attack. Four American pilots never returned—men who had lifted off from the carrier in wartime but were shot down during peacetime. Drawing on participant letters, diaries, and interviews, newspaper and radio accounts, and previously untapped archival records, historian and prolific author of acclaimed Pacific theater books, including Tin Can Titans and Hell from the Heavens, John Wukovits tells the story of Air Group 88's pilots and crew through their eyes. Dogfight over Tokyo is written in the same riveting, edge-of-your-seat style that has made Wukovits's previous books so successful. This is a stirring, one-of-a-kind tale of naval encounters and the last dogfight of the war—a story that is both inspirational and tragic.

Download or read book Into the Rising Sun written by Patrick K. O'Donnell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-07-13 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Iwo Jima was a massacre. I never expected anything like that. People were dying left and right...No names should have been used on the flag raisings because we didn't get up there by ourselves. It was the collective actions of a lot of people and there were a lot of Raiders and paratroopers up there with us." -- Charles Lindberg, Flag Raiser Patrick O'Donnell has made a career of uncovering the hidden history of World War II by tracking down and interviewing its most elite troops: the Rangers, Airborne, Marines, and First Special Service Force, forerunners to America's Special Forces. These men saw the worst of the war's action, and most of them have been reluctant to talk about it. With O'Donnell's respectful coaxing, however, they first began telling their stories through www.thedropzone.org, his award-winning Web site. In 2001, veterans of the European Theater told their stories in O'Donnell's first book, Beyond Valor. Now, in Into the Rising Sun, O'Donnell presents scores of veterans' personal accounts, based on over a thousand interviews spanning the past ten years, to tell the story of the brutal Pacific war. "They were making a lot of noise, talking, yelling to one another, and I heard someone getting beat up on the left. I can still hear the screams. He was begging for mercy. They [the Japanese] were berating him. Later on I found that it was one of my friends, Ken Ritter." -- Robert Youngdeer, Guadalcanal These veterans were often the first in and the last out of every conflict, from Guadalcanal and Burma to the Philippines and the black sands of Iwo Jima. They faced a cruel enemy willing to try anything, including kamikaze flights and human-guided torpedoes. As O'Donnell explains in the Introduction, most of the men in this book were at first reticent to talk. Over the course of the war, they had spearheaded D-Day-sized beach assaults, encountered cannibalism, suffered friendly-fire incidents, and endured torture as pris-oners of war. Heroes among heroes, they include many recipients of the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, and other medals of battlefield valor, but none bragged about it. As one soldier put it, "When somebody gets decorated, it's because a lot of other men died." By at last telling their stories, these men present an unvarnished look at the war on the ground, a final gift from aging warriors who have already given so much. Only with these accounts can the true horror of the war in the Pacific be fully known. O'Donnell has carefully verified each account by comparing it with official records and interviews, and he intersperses each story with brief commentary. Together with detailed maps of each battle, the veterans' stories in Into the Rising Sun offer nothing less than a complete picture of the war in the Pacific, a ground-level view of some of history's most brutal combat.

Download or read book Pacific Warbird written by Bob Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was written to tell a good story about one mans adventures overseas in World War II. The author, a young navigator on a ten-man B-24 bomber crew, flew with the Thirteenth Air Force (the Jungle Air Force) in the southwest Pacific during most of 1945, the final year of World War II. He flew twenty-four combat bombing missions against Japanese targets from New Guinea to Formosa (Taiwan) before we won the war. This book is his memoir of that period. STYLE: This book was written to read like a novel, to enhance the story-telling aspect of the memoir. The novelistic style is part of a fairly new genre called creative nonfiction or dramatic nonfiction, which adds interest to nonfiction accounts. The dialogs, of course, were created by the author, since there were no tape recorders in 1945. There are no fictional characters in this book. All the names mentioned were real people, really present at that time. DOCUMENTATION: It may read like a novel, but this book is not fiction. It is solidly grounded in fact, based first of all on the memories of the author and other veterans of his bomber crew, or their squadron or bomb group, who have shared their memories with him. It is also documented by official Air Force historical records, squadron histories written at the time and classified secret until 1983, when they were declassified. The author made several trips to the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, and photocopied some 500 pages of relevant records from World War II. The story is further documented by the original letters written by the author to his family and friends, which are now in his files, and by photographs given him by members of his crew, many of which appear in the book. COMING OF AGE: In a letter written to his parents on September 3, 1943, at the end of his army pre-cadet training at Knox College, the author (age 18) wrote: Its been an interesting three months Ive spent here. Ive learned a lot, not just about math and physics, but about men, and girls, and people, and life. Edgar Guest said, It takes a heap o livin to make a house a home, well, I think it takes a heap o livin to make a boy a man. Im beginning to get some of that living here. Im beginning to find out what men are really like, how they treat each other, and how they get along with each other. I think thats one of the few big rewards of army lifelearning how to get along with all sorts of people. This book tells more about the heap o livin to make a boy a man, hence its subtitle, Coming of Age in World War II. PROFANITY: Since the book was written for family readership, the author tried to clean up the language by eliminating most of the casual profanity which characterized military dialog. Some profanity was retained to emphasize moments of tension or high drama, where it was needed for realism. PLOT AND TOPICS: The story begins with an exciting bombing raid over Borneo, and flashes back to the crew flying off to war from California to the South Pacific in March 1945. It ends with their return to California eight months later, after the war was won. During the time overseas, the narrator, Bob Hamilton, copes with adventures in the air, in the jungle, in a life raft, and in the officers club. He wrestles with the morality of war, the grief of losing friends in combat, and the need to sort out his love for three girl friends. The chapter titles tempt readers throughout the story:

Download or read book South Pacific Cauldron written by Alan P Rems and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Award-winning author Alan Rems brilliantly tells of the campaigns in the South Pacific, a region long overlooked, offering both the big picture and the foxhole view” — Military Officer “A fitting tribute to the men who fought and died in an often overlooked theater of World War II. As such, it is a welcome addition to our knowledge of World War II in the Pacific Theater.” — On Point: The Journal of Army History While the Pacific War has been widely studied by military historians and venerated in popular culture through movies and other media, the fighting in the South Pacific Theater has, with few exceptions, been remarkably neglected. Authoritative yet written in a highly readable narrative style, South Pacific Cauldron is the first complete history embracing all land, sea, and air operations in this critically important sector of the oceanic conflict.

Download or read book Rising Sun Falling Skies written by Jeffrey Cox and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Jeffrey Cox conducts a thorough and compelling investigation of the Java Sea Campaign, the first major sea battle of the Pacific War, which inflicted huge costs on the Allies and set the stage for Japan's rout across the Pacific and Indian oceans. Few events have ever shaken a country in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor affected the United States. The Japanese forces then continued to overwhelm the Allies, attacking Malaya with its fortress of Singapore, and taking resource-rich islands in the Pacific in their own blitzkrieg offensive. Allied losses in these early months after America's entry into the war were great, and among the most devastating were those suffered during the Java Sea Campaign, where a small group of Americans, British, Dutch, and Australians were isolated in the Far East – directly in the path of the Japanese onslaught. It would be the first major sea battle of World War II in the Pacific.

Download or read book Finish Forty and Home written by Phil Scearce and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the men and missions of the 11th Bombardment Group as it fought alone and unheralded in the South Central Pacific, while America had its eyes on the war in Europe.

Download or read book Voices of the Pacific written by Adam Makos and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Spearhead and A Higher Call comes an unflinching, brutal, and relentless firsthand chronicle of United States Marine Corps' actions in the Pacific during World War 2. Following fifteen Marines from the Pearl Harbor attack, through battles with the Japanese, to their return home after V-J Day, Adam Makos and Marcus Brotherton have compiled an oral history of the Pacific War in the words of the men who fought on the front lines. With unflinching honesty, these Marines reveal harrowing accounts of combat with an implacable enemy, the friendships and camaraderie they found--and lost--and the aftermath of the war's impact on their lives. With unprecedented access to the veterans, rare photographs, and unpublished memoirs, Voices of the Pacific presents true stories of heroism as told by such World War II veterans as Sid Phillips, R. V. Burgin, and Chuck Tatum--whose exploits were featured in the HBO(R) miniseries, The Pacific--and their Marine buddies from the legendary 1st Marine Division. Includes rare photos