After nearly four decades of government denial, the deeds of four Alabama Air National Guardsmen who died at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 have been made public and their names memorialized at the CIA's Wall of Honor in Langley, Virginia. Their stories can now be told. The four guardsmen who died flew with a group of Alabama volunteers to secret CIA bases in Guatemala and Nicaragua to train Cuban exiles to fly B-26 bombers in support of the invasion forces. When the small group of exhausted pilots could no longer sustain the air battle, seven Alabama Guardsmen flew with them into combat on the...

In this first authorized biography of former Alabama Governor John Patterson, historian Warren Trest offers new insights and rich details into the life of a significant Southern politician whose career touched some of the key struggles of the twentieth century civil rights movement. Patterson later recanted his segregationist views and went on to become a widely respected judge, but as governor from 1958-62, he led Alabama into full white-supremacist rebellion against the national effort to integrate schools and public accommodations. He was a rare Southern supporter of JFK in 1960, but the...

The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of three-dimensionality in war: surface forces now became prey for attackers operating above and below the earth and its oceans. The aerial weapon, prophesied for centuries, became a reality, as did air power projection forces. This insightful book by Warren A. Trest traces the doctrinal underpinnings of the modern United States Air Force, the world's only global air force. We-the men and women who serve in the Air Force, but also our fellow airmen in America's other military services-are the heirs and beneficiaries of a long heritage of doctrinal...