This small band of highly trained and highly skilled individuals fought in the front line for six long years, undertaking some of the most dangerous missions of the war.

    built an air force of 2.3 million men after starting with 45,000 and defeated the world's best air force - Vivid accounts of aerial combat In order to defeat Germany in World War II, the Allies needed to destroy the Third Reich's industry and invade its territory, but before they could effectively do either, they had to defeat the Luftwaffe, whose state-of-the-art aircraft and experienced pilots protected German industry and would batter any attempted invasion. This difficult task fell largely to the U.S., which, at the outset, lacked the necessary men, materiel, and training. Over the ensuing years, thanks to visionary leadership and diligent effort, the U.S. Army Air Force developed strategies and tactics and assembled a well-trained force that convincingly defeated the Luftwaffe.

    . . [with] new information, photographs and first-hand accounts." --FlypastDuring the 1950s, plans were being drawn at North American Aviation in Southern California for an incredible Mach-3 strategic bomber. The concept was born as a result of General Curtis LeMay's desire for a heavy bomber with the weapon load and range of the subsonic B-52 and a top speed in excess of the supersonic medium bomber, the B-58 Hustler. However, in April 1961, Defense Secretary McNamara stopped the production go-ahead for the B-70 because of rapid cost escalation and the USSR's newfound ability to destroy aircraft at extremely high altitude using either missiles or the new Mig-25 fighter. Nevertheless, in 1963 plans for the production of three high-speed research aircraft were approved and construction proceeded. In September 1964 the first Valkyrie, now re-coded A/V-1, took to the air for the first time and in October went supersonic.This book is the most detailed description of the design, engineering and research that went into this astounding aircraft. It is full of unpublished details, photographs and firsthand accounts from those closely associated with the project. Although never put into full production, this giant six-engined aircraft became famous for its breakthrough technology, and the spectacular images captured on a fatal air-to-air photo shoot when an observing Starfighter collided with Valkyrie A/V-2 which crashed into the Mojave Desert."Well-illustrated with numerous diagrams and black and white photographs, the book provides an interesting insight into one of the so-called 'white elephant' projects of the 1960s." --Jets Monthly

    It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

    France, Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries were all under occupation. Only Britain stood in the way of the complete triumph, and Hitler planned a two-pronged offensive—a blistering aerial bombardment followed by a land invasion—to subdue his final enemy. But for the first time in the war, Hitler did not prevail. As Leo McKinstry details in this fascinating new history, the British were far more ruthless and proficient than is usually recognized. The brilliance of the RAF in the Battle of Britain was not an exception but part of a pattern of magnificent organization that thwarted Hitler’s armies at every turn. Using a wealth of archival and primary source materials, Leo McKinstry provides a groundbreaking new assessment of the six fateful months in mid-1940 when Operation Sea Lion was all that stood between the Nazis and total victory.

    But in this ground-breaking new book, one of the finest military historians argues that the Mediterranean was World War II's pivotal theatre. Douglas Porch examines the Mediterranean as an integrated arena, one in which events in Syria and Suez influenced the survival of Gibraltar. The Middle Sea constituted a strategic piece of a global war where crucial military decisions were made: it was a passage that linked far-flung theatres; saved scarce Allied shipping; became an essential conduit for lend-lease aid to the USSR; offered France a testing ground for its rehabilitation as a military power; and provided an entry point into southern Germany for two Allied armies. Without a Mediterranean alternative, the Western Allies would probably have committed to a premature cross-Channel invasion in 1943 that might well have cost them the war. Brilliantly argued, with vivid portraits of Churchill, Montgomery,

    The presence of 352 Division meant that the number of defenders was literally double the number expected—and on the best fortified of all the invasion beaches. This infantry division would ensure the invaders would pay a massive price to take Omaha Beach. There were veterans from the Russian front among them and they were well trained and equipped. What makes this account of the bloody struggle unique is that it is told from the German standpoint, using firsthand testimony of German combatants. There are not many of them left and these accounts have been painstakingly collected by the authors over many years.

    infantry experience in northern Europe, A Foot Soldier for Patton takes the reader from the beaches of Normandy through the giddy drive across France, to the brutal battles on the Westwall, in the Ardennes, and finally to the conquest of Germany itself. Patton’s army is best known for dashing armored attacks, its commander combining the firepower of tanks with their historic lineage as cavalry. But when the Germans stood firm the greatest fighting was done by Patton’s long undersung infantry–the foot sloggers who were called upon to reduce enemy strong points, and who took the brunt of German counterattacks. Michael Bilder, a member of the 5th Infantry (“Red Diamond” division), played a unique role in the Third Army’s onslaught. A rifleman foremost, he was also a German-speaker, called upon for interrogations and special duties. Also a combat lifeguard,

    Then they became the Trümmerfrauen, or Rubble Women, as they cleared and tidied their ruined country to get it back on its feet. They were Germany's heroines. The few women tried and convicted after the war were simply the evil aberrations - the camp guards, the female Nazi elite - that proved this rule.However, Wendy Lower's research into the very ordinary women who went out to the Nazi Eastern Front reveals an altogether different story. For ambitious young women, the emerging Nazi empire represented a kind of Wild East of career and matrimonial opportunity. Over half a million of them set off for these new lands, where most of the worst crimes of the Reich would occur.Through the interwoven biographies of thirteen women, the reader follows the transformation of young nurses, teachers, secretaries and wives who start out in Weimar and Nazi Germany as ambitious idealists and end up as witnesses, accomplices and perpetrators of the genocide in Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. Hitler's Furies presents overwhelming evidence that the women in these territories actively participated in the mass murder - and some became killers. In the case of women like Erna Petri, who brought her family to her husband's impressive Polish SS estate, we find brutality as chilling as any in history.Hitler's Furies is indelible proof that we have not known what we need to know about the role of women in the Nazi killing fields - or about how it could have been hidden for seventy years. It shows that genocide is women's business as well as men's and that, in ignoring women's culpability, we have ignored the reality of the Holocaust.

     Fast and heavy-gunned, the battle-cruiser could overhaul and destroy anything at sea except the battleship. The brain child of Admiral Jacky Fisher, the battle-cruiser was intended to be light, fast, and able to avoid action with ships-of-the-line. However, the battle-cruisers came to be treated as fast battleships …And expected to fight as a battleship. But their design rendered them vulnerable and left them outmatched. This weakness was cruelly exposed at the battle of Jutland in 1916, where three of the battle-cruisers exploded. Known as the ‘Splendid Cats’ for their speed and viciousness, battle cruisers fought at Heligoland Bight, the Falkland’s Islands, Dogger Bank and Jutland. Following the First World War the battle-cruisers biggest enemy was the scrapyard. Once more the world was plunged into war, and four battle-cruisers would be lost during the Second World War. The most famous is perhaps the Hood, following the action against the Bismark. Only the Renown survived both world wars, yet she was condemned to the breaker’s yard in the summer of 1948. From the far side of the world to home waters, the battle-cruisers played a vital part in the British war effort. Combining meticulous research with a novelist’s flair for storytelling, Battle-Cruisers vividly describes the life and times of the sixteen battle-cruisers built for the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy. Yet ships do not fight on their own. This is also the story of the men who served, lived, fought and faced adversity in these floating worlds. Ronald Bassett (1924-1996) was born in Chelsea. During the Munich crisis, at age fourteen, he falsified enlistment papers to become a Rifleman of the King's Royal Rifle Corps (60th Rifles). Following active service, he was exposed and discharged. In his records, his colonel noted, ‘A good soldier. I am sorry to lose him.' Undismayed, he immediately entered the Royal Navy, in which he remained for fourteen years, serving in the Arctic, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, the Far East and, later, Korea. He died in Surrey.

    British and American troops were poised to cross the River Rhine in the west, while in the East the vast Soviet war machine was steam-rolling the soldiers of the Third Reich back towards the capital, Berlin. Even in retreat, the German Army was still a force to be reckoned with and vigorously defended every last bridge, castle, town and village against the massive Russian onslaught. Tony Le Tissier has interviewed a wide range of former German Army and SS soldiers to provide ten vivid first-hand accounts of the fighting retreat that, for one soldier, ended in Hitler's Chancellery building in the ruins of Berlin in April 1945. The dramatic descriptions of combat are contrasted with insights into the human dimension of these desperate battles, reminding the reader that many of the German soldiers whose stories we read shared similar values to the average British 'Tommy' or the American GI and were not all crazed Nazis. Illustrated with photographs of the main characters and specially commissioned maps identifying the location and course of the battles, With Our Backs to Berlin is a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the final days of the Second World War.

    Without the convoys no supplies; without supplies certainly no Second Front. Captain Frederic Walker RN devised and employed tactics which were the only sure means of combating and ultimately defeating the U-boat Wolf packs, but it was only when the Lords of the Admiralty came to employ these tactics that the U-boats were finally defeated.No one did more to regain control of the North Atlantic than Captain Walker. His relentless battle with the U-boat Wolf packs, amounting almost to a personal duel with Admiral Donitz, is an epic saga which has long deserved a larger page in the story of our nation's history, though he did achieve the rare distinction of winning the DSO and three bars. Alan Burn, who served under Walker, brilliantly recaptures the feeling of those dramatic days - the sheer bloody hell of the Atlantic weather, the ever-present menace of the lurking U-boats, but above all the quite remarkable and indomitable spirit which Walker managed to inspire in all who served in the ships under his command. Not only the citizens of Liverpool, where Walker is still revered as a local hero, but all who hold freedom dear will appreciate this well-merited tribute to a largely unsung hero who did as much as any man to preserve that freedom.

    He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk. Manstein also stands as one of the war’s most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO. Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein’s life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career. 510 pages of narrative, 647 pages in total

    But in this rigorous re-investigation of the Battle of Britain, Stephen Bungay tells a story full of revelations. Whether assessing the development of radar or the relative merits of the Spitfire, Hurricane, and Messerschmitt, he uncovers the unexpected truth behind many time-honored myths. Not only a major work of modern history but also a truly compelling narrative, The Most Dangerous Enemy confirms the Battle of Britain as a crucial event in European history.

    Written from the perspective of General George C. Kenney, the man in charge, the book is a candid insider’s account of how America turned the tables on the Japanese in the Pacific through a combination of strategy, tactics, and superior air technology.An entertaining read, as well as an important historical document, Air War in the Pacific features a cast of larger-than-life personalities know to WW2 buffs, from brilliant tactician ‘Big Chief’ General Douglas MacArthur to eccentric hotshot pilot Paul ‘Pappy’ Gunn.