Nichol’s Spitfire is still a sky-borne prima ballerina that kicks like Bruce Lee.’ RAF News ‘A superb journey through the remarkable tale of that British icon, the Spitfire. Brilliantly and engagingly written . . . Truly stunning.’ Andy Saunders, aviation historian ‘A rich and heartfelt tribute to this most iconic British machine. Focusing on the men (and women) who flew the Spitfire, John Nichol has  brought a fresh and powerful perspective to the story. By recording their bravery, humility, camaraderie, tragedy and sheer joy in flying their beloved Spits he has done them, and us, a valuable service.’ Rowland White, author of Vulcan 607 ‘A superb and compelling book. Brilliantly written with some incredible and astonishing stories; it is gripping, moving, emotional and  sometimes humorous – just perfect.’ Squadron Leader (Ret) Clive Rowley, former Officer Commanding RAF Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight ‘There are not many of us left, most of us who survive are over 95 and this is a story of young men. We were the cutting edge of the ‘Shining Sword’ that Bomber Harris dubbed the Lancaster. We survived the Bomber Offensive in which 55,573 — almost half — of our friends and colleagues gave their lives to stop Hitler ruling the world. We are now a whole generation older than the young men and women who serve today and in a few years we will all be gone. Historians will then be able to throw around their insouciant opinions about what we did with no contradiction by those who were there. When we are gone our stories of flying and fighting the Lancaster should not die with us. We are the last witnesses to the legend of the Lancaster and those who fought and died within its metal body.’  - Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Beetham   After its maiden flight on 5th January 1941, Lancaster chief test pilot Sam Browne said, ‘Oh boy, oh boy. What an aircraft!’ With a maximum weight of over thirty tons, far heavier than the RAF’s previous generation of bomber, the standard version could lift, on average, 14,000lbs of bombs. Britain was ready to take the aerial war to Nazi Germany in a deadly fashion.   During the course of the Second World War, 7,377 Lancaster bombers were built, flying a total of 156,000 sorties and dropped 618,378 tonnes of bombs on German cities such as Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and, of course, Dresden. Only thirty-five Lancasters completed more than 100 operations, and 3,249 were lost in action. The most successful, which completed 139 operations, was sent for scrap in 1947. One seventh of all deaths suffered by the British during WWII were incurred by Bomber Command. Over 50,000 aircrew were lost over the skies of Europe.   Now, John Nichol, Gulf War veteran, ex-POW in Iraq and Sunday Times bestselling author of Spitfire: A Very British Love Story reveals the true cost of flying this iconic and deadly airplane – through the few authentic voices of the RAF veterans who are left to us.

    Despite being wounded, she fought the enemy and saved the lives of her crew and their patients. But soon she would face a new battle: to give women who serve on the front lines the credit they deserve. . . .   After being commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan flying combat search and rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn her the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor.   But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge— to eliminate the military’s Ground Combat Exclusion Policy, which kept female armed service members from officially serving in combat roles despite their long-standing record of doing so with honor.   In Shoot like A Girl, Hegar takes the reader on a dramatic journey through her military career: an inspiring, humorous, and thrilling true story of a brave, high-spirited, and unforgettable woman who has already spent much of her life ready to sacrifice everything for her country, her fellow man, and her sense of justice.

    It was the quintessential “good war,” in which the forces of freedom triumphed over the forces of darkness. Now, in his provocative new book, historian Michael Bess explodes the myth that this was a war fought without moral ambiguity. He shows that although it was undeniably a just war—a war of defense against unprovoked aggression—it was a conflict fraught with painful dilemmas, uneasy trade-offs, and unavoidable compromises. With clear-eyed, principled assurance, Bess takes us into the heart of a global contest that was anything but straightforward, and confronts its most difficult questions: Was the bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan justified? Were the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials legally scrupulous? What is the legacy bequeathed to the world by Hiroshima? And what are the long-term ramifications of the Anglo-American alliance with Stalin, a leader whose atrocities rivaled those of Hitler? Viewing the conflict as a composite of countless choices made by governments, communities, and—always of the utmost importance—individuals, Bess untangles the stories of singular moral significance from the mass of World War II data. He examines the factors that led some people to dissent and defy evil while others remained trapped or aloof, caught in the net of large-scale operations they saw as beyond their control. He explains the complex psychological dynamics at work among the men of Reserve Battalion 101, a group of ordinary working-class Germans who swept through the Polish countryside slaughtering Jews, and among the townspeople of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, who rescued thousands of Jewish refugees at their own peril. He asks poignant hypothetical questions, such as what would have happened had the Catholic Church taken a hard line against Nazism, placing an imperative on its members to choose between their loyalties. As Bess guides us through the war’s final theater, the politics of memory, he shows how long-simmering controversies still have the power to divide nations more than half a century later. It is here that he argues against the binaries of honor and dishonor, pride and shame, and advocates instead an honest and nuanced reckoning on the part of the world’s nations with the full complexity of their World War II pasts. Forthright and authoritative, this is a rigorous accounting of the war that forever changed our world, a book that takes us to the outer limits of moral reasoning about historical events.

    Story of a combat pilot in World War II.

    Some volunteered, but most were given no choice, in particular about whether to become a sniper or to fill some other combat role.After a few months of brutal training, the female snipers were issued with high-powered rifles and sent to the front. Almost without exception, their first kill came as a great shock, and changed them forever. But as the number of kills grew, many snipers became addicted to their new profession, some to the point of becoming depressed if a "hunt" proved fruitless.Accounts from the veterans of the female sniper corps include vivid descriptions of the close bonds they formed with their fellow soldiers, but also the many hardships and deprivations they faced: days and days in a trench without enough food, water, or rest, their lives constantly at risk from the enemy and from the cold; burying their friends, most of them yet to leave their teenage years; or the frequent sexual harassment by male officers.Although many of these young women were killed, often on their first day of combat, the majority returned from the front, only to face the usual constellation of trials with which every war veteran is familiar. Some continued their studies, but most were forced to work, even as they also started families or struggled to adjust to life as single parents. Nearly all of them were still in their early twenties, and despite the physical and mental scars left by the war, they had no time for complaints as the Soviet Union rebuilt following the war.Drawing on original interviews, diaries, and previously unpublished archival material, historian Lyuba Vinogradova has produced an unparalleled quilt of first-person narratives about these women's lives. This fascinating document brings the realities and hardships faced by the Red Army's female sniper corps to life, shedding light on a little-known aspect of the Soviet Union's struggles against Hitler's war machine.

    Hitler's soldiers stormed the city in September 1942 in a bid to complete the conquest of Europe. Yet Stalingrad never fell. After months of bitter fighting, 100,000 surviving Germans, huddled in the ruined city, surrendered to Soviet troops. During the battle and shortly after its conclusion, scores of Red Army commanders and soldiers, party officials and workers spoke with a team of historians who visited from Moscow to record their conversations. The tapestry of their voices provides groundbreaking insights into the thoughts and feelings of Soviet citizens during wartime. Legendary sniper Vasily Zaytsev recounted the horrors he witnessed at Stalingrad: "You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park.[ . . .] That has a tremendous impact." Nurse Vera Gurova attended hundreds of wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital every day, but she couldn't forget one young amputee who begged her to avenge his suffering. "Every soldier and officer in Stalingrad was itching to kill as many Germans as possible," said Major Nikolai Aksyonov. These testimonials were so harrowing and candid that the Kremlin forbade their publication, and they were forgotten by modern history -- until now. Revealed here in English for the first time, they humanize the Soviet defenders and allow Jochen Hellbeck, in Stalingrad, to present a definitive new portrait of the most fateful battle of World War II.

    A graduate of West Point and an inductee in the National College Football Hall of Fame for his All-American performance for Army, Olds was one of the toughest college football players at the time. In WWII, Olds quickly became a top fighter pilot and squadron commander by the age of 22—and an ace with 12 aerial victories.But it was in Vietnam where the man became a legend. He arrived in 1966 to find a dejected group of pilots and motivated them by placing himself on the flight schedule under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them. Proving he wasn’t a WWII retread, he led the wing with aggressiveness, scoring another four confirmed kills, becoming a rare triple ace.Olds (who retired a brigadier general and died in 2007) was a unique individual whose personal story is one of the most eagerly anticipated military books of the year.

    No matter how gruesome the memories are, relatively few of the interviewees said they would have been better off without the experience. It was a central and formative experience in their lives. Although 400,000 Americans perished, the United States itself was not attacked again after Pearl Harbor, the economy grew, and there was a new sense of world power that invigorated the country. Some women and African Americans experienced new freedoms in the post war society, but good life after World War II was tarnished by the threat of nuclear war.

    The relentless and unstoppable German advances that had seen the panzers sweep hundreds of miles into Russia was finally brought to a halt. The elite German 6th Army was first fought to a standstill, then surrounded and forced to surrender.Over 1.5 million people lost their lives during the six months of fighting, many of them civilians caught up in the campaign. For the first time in the war, the German army had been defeated on the field of battle. Before Stalingrad the Russians never won; after Stalingrad they could not lose.This book looks at the titanic struggle that ended in the total destruction of the second city of the Soviet Union, the greatest battle the world has ever seen.

    Robert Leckie was 21 when he enlisted in the US Marine Corps in January 1942. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his journey, from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war's fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifice of war, painting an unsentimental portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and all too often die in the defence of their country.From the live-for-today rowdiness of Marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what it's really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow is a gripping account from an ordinary soldier fighting in extraordinary conditions. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.Helmet for My Pillow is a grand and epic prose poem. Robert Leckie's theme is the purely human experience of war in the Pacific, written in the graceful imagery of a human being who - somehow - survived - Tom Hanks

     When he was a boy growing up in the remote mining town of Clinchco, Virginia, Shifty Powers's goal was to become the best rifle shot he could be. His father trained him to listen to the woods, to "see" without his eyes. Little did Shifty know his finely-tuned skills would one day save his life-and the lives of many of his friends. "Shifty's War" is a tale of a soldier's blood-filled days fighting his way from the shores of France to the heartland of Germany, and the epic story of how one man's abilities as a sharpshooter, along with an engagingly unassuming personality, propelled him to a life greater than he could have ever imagined.

    Telling of the siege of Leningrad, of glittering dinner parties with Nazi leaders, and of trains disgorging bodies in war-devastated Romania, Malaparte paints a picture of humanity at its most depraved.Kaputt is an insider’s dispatch from the world of the enemy that is as hypnotically fascinating as it is disturbing.

    Pilot to crew. Bail out! Bail out!” On 19th October, 1944, 2/Lt Kenneth W. Simmons was forced to jump from the damaged B-24 aircraft while in a bombing raid over Germany. Once he landed he quickly became a ‘kriegie’, a prisoner of war, which he remained until General Patton’s men freed him in late April 1945. Much of these seven months of captivity were spent in the dismal conditions of the prison camp Stalag Luft II. Simmons provides fascinating insight into what life was like be an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany, from undergoing interrogations to suffering cruelty and abuse from the guards. He records not only the mundane day to day life of the prisoners but also their private projects, from forging documents to using the latrine to dispose of waste material from their tunneling projects. “steadily interesting … due to the small details of everyday existence” Kirkus Reviews “The march of death … is one of the most impressive scenes to be portrayed of World War II.” Houston Chronicle “a story of hellish and holy experiences undergone by the men who became PW of the Nazis.” Daily Democrat Kenneth Simmons was an American airman with the 8th Air Force who was forced to bail out of his plane just north of Bad Kreuznach in Germany. His work Kreigie records his experiences as a prisoner of war and was first published in 1960. Simmons passed away in 1969.

     From 1941 to 1944, Bignor Manor, a farmhouse in Sussex provided board and lodging for men and women of the French Resistance before they were flown by moonlight into occupied France. Barbara Bertram, whose husband was a conducting officer for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), became hostess for these daring agents and their pilots during their brief stopovers in their house. But who were these men and women that passed through the Bertram’s house? And what activities did they conduct whilst in France that meant that so many of them never returned? Edward Wake-Walker charts the experiences of numerous agents, such as Gilbert Renault, Christian Pineau and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, and the networks of operatives that they created that provided top-secret intelligence on German defences and naval bases, U-boats, as well as Hitler’s devastating new weapons, the V-1 and V-2 flying bombs. A House For Spies provides fascinating insight into the lives of SIS agents and their Lysander pilots who provided invaluable intelligence to Allied forces. This is a much-forgotten aspect of the Second World War that is only now being told by Edward Wake-Walker. “Utterly fascinating, very moving and funny. I couldn't have enjoyed it more.” — Hugh Grant “Edward Wake-Walker's meticulously researched chronicles of desperate resistance, audacity, duty, determination and daring are a valuable addition to the history of World War II” — Bel Mooney, Daily Mail “It kept me up at night as I wanted to know what happened to all the various characters [brought] so admirably back to life” — Russell England, Director of Bletchley Park: Codebreaking's Forgotten Genius and Operation Mincemeat

    World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.Across the globe in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the deadliest weapon known to mankind. In Washington, DC, FDR dies in office and Harry Truman ascends to the presidency, only to face the most important political decision in history: whether to use that weapon. And in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito, who is considered a deity by his subjects, refuses to surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Told in the same page-turning style of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan, this epic saga details the final moments of World War II like never before.