Kategoria BISAC: History >> Military - Aviation & Space

The Trial is the fourth book of Cap Parlier's To So Few series of historical novels. Young, American, volunteer pilot Brian Drummond and his British buddy Jonathan Kensington had been with No.609 Squadron for only six months, when the Spitfire fighter squadron moved south to join the foreboding fight. The Trial takes the young pilots of Fighter Command through August and September 1940 - the most intense and conclusive phase of the greatest battle in all of aviation history. Amongst the unrelenting, mind-numbing fatigue of multiple...

The day that will live in infamy was just the beginning...

I Was Just a Radioman

In 1940, still in high school, Henry P. Lawrence joined the Navy Reserves. Little did he know that a year later, in May of 1941, he'd be called to service and deployed to Hawaii. No one believed the Japanese would be aggressive enough to attack a U.S. territory.

Their plan...to cripple the United States military.

The attack at Pearl came hard and fast. I Was Just a Radioman is a collection of the memoirs of ARM Henry P. Lawrence, a...

By the time the Americans began their aerial bombardment of Japan in 1944, both the JAAF and IJNAF were spent forces. What the Japanese did have though was the Ki-44 "Tojo." Armed with two 40 mm cannon, it was the most heavily armed and feared single-seat fighter to see action against the new American bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. For the bomber crews, they had what they believed was their "ace in hole": a fully armed B-29 carried four remotely operated gun turrets and a tail gunner's position, making it the world's most advanced self-defending bomber.

In every respect the Ki-44...

Following Argentina's military operation to take possession of the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government launched a major naval operation to return them to British rule. Defending the Royal Navy task force were two small squadrons totalling 20 Sea Harriers (SHARs). Initial clashes between SHARs and Argentine Mirages and Daggers on 1 May 1982 failed to eliminate the Sea Harrier defenders. FAA fighter-bomber pilots relied on daring and courageous ultra-low level attacks, frequently escaping the Sea Harrier's limited capabilities, against Royal...

Even before the spectacular success of its X-1 rocket-powered aircraft in breaking the "sound barrier," the adventurous Bell Aircraft Corporation was already pushing ahead with a parallel project to build a second aircraft capable of far higher speeds. The X-2 (or Model 52) explored the equally uncertain technology of swept-back wings. Now common in modern conventional fighter aircraft, the Bell X-2 revolutionary in using this type of airframe to probe Mach 3 and research the effects of extreme aerodynamic friction heat on airframes.

Although both X-2s were destroyed in crashes...

The Battle of Britain was one of the most iconic campaigns of World War II, where the "Few" of the Royal Air Force took on the might of the German Luftwaffe. At stake was not just air superiority over the British Isles--a German victory would enable Hitler's plan to invade and conquer the last Allied country left fighting.

While most narratives of the battle focus on the brave pilots of Fighter Command, this book tells it from the perspective of the German strategists as they attempted to clear the skies over Britain. Explaining Hermann Goring's plans, the Luftwaffe's capabilities in...

In 1940, the strategically vital island of Malta was Britain's last toehold in the central Mediterranean, wreaking havoc among Axis shipping. Launching an air campaign to knock Malta out of the war, first Italy and then Germany sought to force a surrender or reduce the defenses enough to allow an invasion.

Drawing on original documents, multilingual aviation analyst Ryan Noppen explains how technical and tactical problems caused the original Italian air campaign of 1940-41 to fail, and then how the German intervention came close to knocking Malta out of the war. Using stunning full...

In 1942, the massive Japanese naval base and airfield at Rabaul was a fortress standing in the Allies' path to Tokyo. It was impossible to seize Rabaul, or starve the 100,000-strong garrison out. Instead the US began an innovative, hard-fought two-year air campaign to draw its teeth, and allow them to bypass the island completely.

The struggle decided more than the fate of Rabaul. If successful, the Allies would demonstrate a new form of warfare, where air power, with a judicious use of naval and land forces, would eliminate the need to occupy a ground objective in order to control...

Formed shortly after the outbreak of World War 2, and equipped with Messerschmitt Bf 109Es, Jagdgeschwader 1 was initally tasked to defend the regional North Sea and Baltic coastal areas and the Germany's main port cities and naval bases. The greatest task for JG 1 though came after 1942 in its defence of the Reich against the US Eighth Air Force's B-17s and B-24s, bearing the brunt of defence against increasingly regular, larger and deep penetrating USAAF daylight bomber raids with fighter escort. Levels of attrition subsequently grew, but so did experience among the leading aces,...

The bombing campaign that was meant to keep South Vietnam secure, Rolling Thunder became a byword for pointless, ineffective brutality, and was a key factor in America's Vietnam defeat. But in its failures, Rolling Thunder was one of the most influential air campaigns of the Cold War. It spurred a renaissance in US air power and the development of an excellent new generation of US combat aircraft, and it was still closely studied by the planners of the devastatingly successful Gulf War air campaign.

Dr Richard P. Hallion, a vastly knowledgeable air power expert at the...

Allied fighter pilots began encountering German jets--principally the outstanding Me 262 fighter--from the autumn of 1944. Stunned by the aircraft's speed and rate of climb, it took USAAF and RAF units time to work out how to combat this deadly threat as the Luftwaffe targeted the medium and heavy bombers attacking targets across the Reich.

A number of high-scoring aces from the Eighth Air Force (Drew, Glover, Meyer, Norley and Yeager, to name but a few) succeeded in claiming Me 262s, Me 163, and Ar 234s during the final months of the campaign, as did RAF aces like Tony Gaze and...

Having learned their trade on the subsonic MiG-17, pilots of the Vietnamese People's Air Force (VPAF) received their first examples of the legendary MiG-21 supersonic fighter in 1966. Soon thrown into combat over North Vietnam, the guided-missile equipped MiG-21 proved a deadly opponent for the US Air Force, US Navy and US Marine Corps crews striking at targets deep in communist territory.

Although the communist pilots initially struggled to come to terms with the fighter's air-search radar and weapons systems, the ceaseless cycle of combat operations quickly honed their skills....

Winner of 20 national book awards, SHOT DOWN is set within the framework of World War II in Europe and recounts the dramatic experiences of each member of a ten man B-17 bomber crew after their plane, piloted by the author's father, was knocked out of the sky by German fighters over the French/Belgian border on February 8,1944.

Some men died. Some were captured and became prisoners of war. Some men evaded capture and were missing in action for months before making it back to England. Their individual stories and those of the courageous Belgian people who risked their lives to help...