American History, American Studies, Civil War Studies

     Between December 27, 1942, and December 17, 1944, he shot down forty Japanese aircraft. This achievement meant that he was the U.S.A.’s top flying ace through the course of the Second World War. George C. Kenney, commanding officer of the Fourth Air Force, knew Bong well and his biography of the young hero brings Bong’s short career in the air force to life. One of Kenney and Bong’s first encounters had been when Bong had been cited and temporarily grounded for looping the Golden Gate bridge, flying at low level down Market Street in San Francisco, and blowing the clothes off an Oakland woman’s clothesline. Kenney reprimanded him saying ““there is no need for me to tell you again that this is a serious matter. If you didn’t want to loop around that bridge or fly down Market Street I wouldn’t have you in my Air Force, but you are not going to do it any more and I mean what I say.” Yet, Kenney was also aware of Bong’s flying skill and although he might have been a bit of a daredevil he acknowledged that for the U. S. Air Force to pose a serious threat to the Japanese “We needed kids like this lad.” Dick Bong: America's Ace of Aces is a remarkable book that uncovers the short, but fascinating, career of America’s greatest fighter pilot. It is full of brilliant insights provided by Kenney who was able to watch this young man develop before his life was cruelly cut short testing a jet aircraft shortly before the war ended. “Both flight enthusiasts and students of the second world war will read with considerable interest of the events of Dick Bong's life in a book which sticks close to its subject” Kirkus Reviews George C. Kenney was a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II. He is best known as the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), a position he held from August 1942 until 1945. Kenney wrote three books about the SWPA air campaigns he led during World War II. He also wrote The Saga of Pappy Gunn in 1959 and Dick Bong: Ace of Aces in 1960, which described the careers of Paul Gunn and Richard Bong, two of the most prominent airmen under his command. He passed away in 1977.

    This work is in four volumes. Each volume covers phases of a single year of the war, and each is complete in itself.

     Before the Great Patriotic War (World War II) it was used mainly as a barracks and a supply base. On the night of June 22, 1941 the fortress was manned by only a small garrison, all the main units were in training camps for the summer. Thanks to their numerical superiority and the advantage gained by a surprise attack, the Germans quickly overran Brest and advanced into the hinterland. But some weeks after the outbreak of war rumors began to penetrate the front-line that far back in the enemy rear the heroic garrison of Brest Fortress was still fighting. The rumors were brought by officers and men who had fought their way out of encirclement, and from the bomber crews making night raids into enemy-held territory, who in the region of Brest saw explosions and the glittering trails of tracer bullets in the darkness below them. German staff papers captured in later battles contained the following admission: "The Russians in Brest-Litovsk fought with exceptional stubbornness and determination, they displayed superb infantry training and a splendid will to resist." In this book Sergei Smirnov, who spent many years in a tireless search for information about the immortal garrison, tells the story of the heroes of Brest Fortress who, though completely cut off from their own forces, fought to their last cartridge, their last breath without surrender.

    He was paid a monthly wage of $13.00, with an additional $1.30 combat pay per month. Setting off for what he later termed "the little wars that are the mere trivia of history," he came back to write "a mild chronicle of many little men who were painting on a big canvas, and of their little epic routines of life, with a common death at their elbow. It is only the little, but keen, tribulations that made the epic routine of an old-fashioned war."

    Among the battles included here are the Pierre’s Hole fight, the battle of Bandera Pass, the battle of Pyramid Lake, the battle of Wood Lake, the Canyon de Chelly rout, the battles of Adobe Walls, the Fetterman, Hayfield, and Wagon Box fights, the fight at Beecher Island, the battle of the Washita, the battles of Massacre Canyon and Palo Duro Canyon, the battle of the Rosebud, the battle of the Little Bighorn, the Dull Knife massacre, and the final, tragic battle at Wounded Knee.“A fine guide to the conflict that transpired across the wide Missouri.”—San Francisco Sunday Chronicle“An excellent account of most of the major fights between the white man and the Indian in…the western part of the United States.”—Library Journal“Two dozen of the most celebrated and hair-raising Indian fights on record. Good, solid reading, and a whole peck of it.”—New York Times Book Review