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through a combination of strategy, tactics, and superior air technology.An entertaining read, as well as an important historical document, Air War in the Pacific features a cast of larger-than-life personalities know to WW2 buffs, from brilliant tactician ‘Big Chief’ General Douglas MacArthur to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.

    Offshore, the large IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) minelayer Okinoshima, flagship of Admiral Shima Kiyohide, lay at anchor, along with two destroyers, Kikuzuki and Yutsuki, and transport ships. Six Japanese Mitsubishi F1M2 floatplanes also rested on the gentle, deep blue swell, marking Tulagi's future as an IJN floatplane base. The men on the beach, at inland construction sites, or aboard the Japanese ships, looked up towards the huge white cumulus clouds sailing on the ocean wind. Taken completely by surprise, the Japanese stood and stared as 13 sturdy-looking dive bombers dropped through the cumulus layer at 6,000 feet, plunging towards the IJN ships. As they streaked lower, the white star on a black disc insignia of American aircraft grew visible on the underside of each wing. As the dive bombers roared low, drowning out the soft clacking of palm-fronds agitated by the steady sea breeze, the dark capsule shapes of 1,000-lb bombs broke away from their undersides and hurtled towards the anchored ships. Amid the sudden thunder of explosions, huge fountains of white foam gushed upward, sparkling in the tropical sunlight before collapsing back into the sea. Only as the American Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless dive bombers began climbing out of their attack did the Japanese finally open fire with the four anti-aircraft guns set up on the Tulagi shore. As Lieutenant Commander William Burch, leader of Scouting Five from the carrier USS Yorktown, later reported, “We took them by surprise, and they didn't start shooting at us until we pulled out […] We hopped back over Guadalcanal, and landed aboard. […] Only one plane had been hit by anti-aircraft. Its sway braces on the bomb rack were damaged. A couple of the dive bombers were attacked by a fighter on floats, but they shot him down. It was the only enemy plane we saw. What's more, I didn't see a ship sink.” (Ludlum, 2006, 70).The Japanese, attacked throughout the day, radioed this information to the IJN task forces operating in the area. The unmistakable US carrier aircraft meant an American aircraft carrier sailed nearby, surprising the Japanese, who had not expected any enemy “flattops” in the Coral Sea near Australia at that time. In fact, the airstrikes on Admiral Shima's Tulagi invasion force marked the start of the strategically important Battle of the Coral Sea. While the Battle of the Coral Sea is not as well known as other battles across the Pacific, it set a precedent by pitting enemy aircraft carriers against each other, a battle in which the rival navies themselves never sighted each other or fired a gun at each other. Instead, the fighting was done with the carriers’ aircraft, something that would become more common over time and would result in decisive actions at places like Midway just months later. Furthermore, while it was in a sense a tactical victory for the Japanese, it would end up helping blunt their aggressive push east in the Pacific, making it a crucial strategic victory for the Allies. The Battle of the Coral Sea: The History and Legacy of World War II’s First Major Battle Between Aircraft Carriers analyzes the historic battle and the strategic importance it had in the Pacific. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Battle of the Coral Sea like never before.

    Having survived the retreat to and evacuation from Dunkirk, he volunteered for the newly formed Commandos and took part in their first operation, the raid on the Lofoten Islands. He fought and was captured in Tunisia. He went on the run before his POW camp at Fontanellato was taken over by the Nazis after the September 1943 Italian armistice. He spent six months on the run in the Apennine mountains aided by brave and selfless Italians. Many of whom were actively fighting their occupiers. He eventually reached Allied lines but not before several of his companions were tragically killed by both German and American fire.On return to England he immediately signed up for the invasion of North West Europe and despite being wounded eventually fought through to Germany.It is thanks to his son's research that Major Young's story can now be told. It is an inspiring and thrilling account which demands to be read.

    Translated from German by Richard and Clara Winston.

    As a child, she was mesmerized by fireflies, loved the scent of white lilies and skated like the wind on Moscow's ice ponds. By the tender age of 14, aviation became her passion; by 16 she had completed her first solo flight; and, by 18 she had trained some 40 male pilots. When Hitler invaded Russia, she became the first female fighter pilot to enter the Motherland's elite all-male 437th IAP. There she flew 168 missions, downed 15 Messersmitts, fell in love with and married her commanding officer, the handsome Captain Alexi Solomatin, who subsequently perished before her eyes. Lilia was shot down for a fourth and final time on August 12, 1943, 17 days shy of her 22nd birthday near the tiny village of Marinovka, in what we now know as the Eastern Ukraine. Due to the absence of her remains at the time, the severe restrictions of post-war communism and the eventual partioning of the Ukraine itself, Lilia's exploits and sacrifices went largely unrecognized until May 5, 1990, when then President Mikhail Gorbachev awarded Lilia the country's highest honor, Hero of the Soviet Union. Today a monument and museum reside in Lilia's name in the modest town of Krasny Luch, not far from the scene of her final battle.

    Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

    Stoically poised for battle in the spring of 1945—when even Japan’s last desperate technique of arms, the kamikaze, was running short—Yamato arose as the last magnificent arrow in the imperial quiver of Emperor Hirohito. Here, Jan Morris not only tells the dramatic story of the magnificent ship itself—from secret wartime launch to futile sacrifice at Okinawa — but, more fundamentally, interprets the ship as an allegorical figure of war itself, in its splendor and its squalor, its heroism and its waste. Drawing on rich naval history and rhapsodic metaphors from international music and art, Battleship Yamato is a work of grand ironic elegy.

    His single mother checked into the hospital as a vibrant young woman and checked out as a full-blown opioid addict. From that day forward, Sean's life became a silent nightmare of abuse, neglect, chronic hunger, and slow, helpless withdrawal from everything and everyone he loved.In Rising Above, Green Beret Sean Rogers chronicles the toughest battle of his life: the long, painful fight to confront his darkest fears and reclaim his life. After struggling as a young man to accept the raw trauma of his past, he eventually learned to understand and embrace it, ultimately using it to become an elite Special Forces operator.Through this profoundly honest and inspiring memoir, Rogers explores what it means to make the pain of your past work for you, showing you how to harness the truth of your own reality and take control of your destiny.

    Another carrier was nearly ready for launch when the news arrived, so the navy changed her name to Lexington, confusing the Japanese.The men of the original "Lady Lex" loved their ship and fought hard to protect her. They were also seeking revenge for the losses sustained at Pearl Harbor. Crippling attacks by the Japanese left her on fire and dead in the water. A remarkable 90 percent of the crew made it off the burning decks before Lexington had to be abandoned. In all the annals of the Second World War, there is hardly a battle story more compelling.Lexington's legacy did not end with her demise, however. Although the battle was deemed a tactical success for the Japanese, it turned out to be a strategic loss: For the first time in the war, a Japanese invasion force was forced to retreat.The lessons learned by losing the Lexington at Coral Sea impacted tactics, air wing operations, damage control, and ship construction. Altogether, they forged a critical, positive turning point in the war. The ship that ushered in and gave birth to a new era in naval warfare might be gone, but fate decreed that her important legacy would live on.

    Caught there by the outbreak of the Second World War, he was unable to return to his parents for seven years. In due course, he was called to serve in an anti-aircraft battery and in the National Labour Service. Just after his eighteenth birthday, he was sent to the Russian Front with the elite Paratrooper and Tank Division, Hermann Göring. He lived through an amazing series of events, escaping death many times and was one of the few survivors of his division when the war ended. In this narrative of his early life, John Stieber describes how he went from a carefree childhood through increasing hardships, until every day of his life became a challenge for survival.

    Jay Stout breaks new ground in World War II aviation history with this gripping account of one of the war's most highly decorated American fighter groups Vivid descriptions of aerial combat in P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs, along with veteran interviews and after-action reports The 352nd was part of the famed Eighth Air Force and fought in the European theater Nickname comes from the noses of the unit's planes, which were painted blue

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Now, drawing on sources newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, historian and journalist Chris Bellamy presents the first full account of this deadly conflict.Bellamy outlines the lead-up to the war—in which the fragile alliance between Hitler and Stalin was unceremoniously broken—and takes us headlong into the hostilities. He presents a shocking picture of battle in which the traditional restraints of “civilized” warfare were shed. He makes clear how the Soviets quickly rallied against Hitler, choosing homegrown despotism over foreign domination in a struggle that the Russian people call the Great Patriotic War.Bellamy charts the early gains of the German army, whose advances into Soviet territory were brought to a halt in Moscow in the winter of 1941, and whose defeat was sealed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most merciless campaign of the bloodiest front. He shows how Soviet men—and women—joined to fight a war whose casualties were later steeply underestimated by their government, and how even the true death toll, at 27 million, does not take into account the millions of lives on both sides that lay shattered in the aftermath.Finally, Bellamy examines the far-reaching consequences of the battle’s outcome—the reverberations of which are still felt today—and argues that the cost of victory was ultimately too much for the Soviet Union to bear.A magisterial study, and an essential addition to our understanding of contemporary world history.

    Told through the lives and battles of eleven of our most remarkable admirals - men such as James II and Robert Blake - Andrew Lambert's book stretches from the Spanish Armada to the Second World War, culminating with the spirit which led Andrew Browne Cunningham famously to declare, when the army feared he would lose too many ships, 'it takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition.'