Varied stories of what it was like to be a proud member of a flight crew aboard that amazing Mach 2 strategic bomber back in the 1960's.

    B-36 crews trained for the one flight when they would be ordered to drop combat nuclear bombs on the USSR. Flights of fifteen hours over continental United States to grueling thirty-hour nonstop flights overseas were routine, all without the benefit of in-flight refueling—not yet invented. The experiences of this crew, as they flew their assigned missions, are part of the history of our nation’s defense. They were part of our Cold War Shield.

    Out of the Blue: The Final Landing: Yet more scary and often funny tales from the Royal Air Force and Friends Foreword by Air Marshall Cliff Spink CB CBE FCMI FRAeS RAF Ret'd

    I flew cargo from the 1980's to the present time. From older planes and pilots that are no longer around, to the more modern cargo jets up to today's Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

    After gaining his wings he joined No 233 General Reconnaissance Squadron of Coastal Command based at Thornaby in Yorkshire. The aircraft he flew was the Avro Anson, a small twin engine aircraft that was originally designed for civilian use but had been hastily modified with the addition of two machine guns and a 280 lb bomb load. Before the outbreak of war the squadron was moved to Leuchers. Early in 1939, Coastal Command crews were ordered to ferry some Blenheim twin-engined bombers to Middle East Command and Gron was selected as a navigator for the flight to Egypt. Upon landing in Egypt they found that they had set a record time of 33 hours, 3 hours less than Imperial Airways. 233 Squadron were re-equipped with the Lockheed Hudson, a larger aircraft that enabled reconnaissance patrols along the Norwegian coast. In April 1940, as they were approaching the Norwegian coast, Gron spotted a Heinkell 115. He attacked from astern and damaged the aircraft. Although very nearly flying into the sea. Patrols continued, searching for German capital ships hiding in the Fiords. During the first five months of the Norwegian campaign 233 Squadron suffered 35% casualties even 50% on one shipping strike. Gron was awarded the DFC for his part in this operation. After becoming short-sighted and night-blind Gron was given a brief respite and then posted to the Navigational School at Cranage in Cheshire and a little later qualified as a Specialist Armament Officer. In September 1944 he sailed for Bombay and then travelled overland to Maniur, 500 miles north-east of Imphal. Gron took the job of Armament Officer of No 221 Group, a close-support fighter/bomber group of about 20 squadrons attached to the 14th Army. With the Japanese in retreat the group moved to Indianggye in Burma. Gron commanded the RAF advance party. During his service there he was Mentioned in Despatches.

    To some, nuclear deterrence appeared as utter madness, and was in fact commonly referred to as M.A.D. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction provoked protests and marches, and the architect of M.A.D, General Curtis LeMay, became a symbol of madness himself.

    He found himself in the navy while growing up during Vietnam. He was the first to shoot down two enemy airplanes and flew 350 combat missions during three deployments aboard USS Kitty Hawk. The ledger he kept will bring you right there with him as he recounts many of those more than exciting missions including being shot down near Hanoi. He flew F4 Phantom to 85,000 feet during operational test flights at the McDonnell-Douglas factor in St Louis. Later at VX-4 in Pt Mugu, California he tested the F 14 Tomcat and flew the MiG 21 from Area 51. He went on to command a Fighter Squadron from USS Midway home-ported in Japan and then went on to be Flight Leader and Commanding Officer of the Blue Angels. He went on to Command the aircraft carrier John F Kennedy.

    Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. Upstate New York hosts an outdoor concert called Woodstock. The Vietnam war rages on. Tom Combs, a young man from Seattle, faces certain draft induction. He decides upon the United States Air Force as the best choice of service. Then it’s Basic Training, technical school for jet mechanics, assistant crew chief on a C-130 at Dyess AFB, Texas, a stint in the Middle East and eventually, he’s assigned to the most prestigious squadron of aircraft in S.E. Asia: The 16th Special Operations Squadron of AC-130s. Call sign: SPECTRE. FLIGHTLINE offers a unique “behind-the-scenes” look at how maintenance crews keep their airplanes flying—and fighting—all from the point of view of a seasoned Air Force Crew Chief.

    It has many thousands of devotees who are a ready market for this timely and entertaining book which, with over twenty individual stories from former Lightning pilots, relates the highs and lows, the dramas and the demands of those who operated this iconic aircraft from the sharp end.

    After several failed attempts he got out over the wire and journeyed for weeks as a fugitive from northern France to Marseilles, then across the Pyrenees to Spain and Gibraltar and freedom. He was guided along the way by French civilians, resistance fighters and the organizers of the famous Pat escape line. His straightforward, honest and vivid memoir of his work as a surgeon at Dunkirk, life in the prison camps and his escape attempts gives a fascinating insight into his wartime experience. It records the ingenuity and courage of the individuals, the ordinary men and women, who risked their lives to help him on his way. It is also one of the best accounts we have of what it was like to be on the run in occupied Europe.

     The soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division saw some of the bloodiest action of the Second World War. Ours to Hold It High is brilliant history of the division’s actions through the course of World War Two as it island-hopped its way towards victory in the face of ferocious Japanese resistance. The story begins in America in 1942 when the division was re-activated and the units were formed and given training before they sailed west to fight. Part one of the book covers these initial two years and the various forms of rigorous training that the men went through to prepare them for the amphibious warfare that they would meet in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Parts two, three, four, and five of the book provides brilliant insight into the combat history of the unit from Guam to Okinawa. The actions of each unit of the division are uncovered to give a thorough overview of the tumultuous and chaotic action that the men saw. This is account is not written by a historian sitting at a desk in the United States, instead it was written by the soldiers who were there on the frontlines. Max Myers, the unit historian, has compiled their accounts to form this fascinating book. The actions of the 77th have become famous throughout the globe, particularly with the assistance of films such as Hacksaw Ridge that have immortalized the division. Almost every member of the 77th contributed in one way or another to this history. The Commanding General and members of his staff, the commanders and staff members from the organizations, and many other individuals devoted some of their time to revision and correction of preliminary manuscripts. Ours to Hold It High was initially published in 1947 and Max Myers, the main editor, passed away in 2011.

    Ol’ Shakey: Memories of a Flight Engineer shares some of the most memorable stories of Gene’s career as a Flight Engineer flying in the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II, nicknamed “Ol’ Shakey” – an aircraft that had a habit of keeping the flight crews on their toes dealing with quirky malfunctions. From a colorful layover at Midway Island to kite-flying at Pope Air Force Base, to overspeeding propellers, Gene’s stories will entertain military personnel, aviators and anyone who is enthusiastic about the romance of flying – and gives a glimpse of the reality behind that romance.

    Navy fighter/attack pilot from 1956 to 1980. (What it was like to fly jets off aircraft carriers in the days before smart bombs, GPS, and automated carrier landing systems.) After two years at the University of Arizona, the author entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in Pensacola, Florida, and became a carrier-qualified jet pilot at age twenty. As a naval aviator, he flew 3,669 hours in thirteen different types of aircraft, made 652 carrier landings (163 of them at night), and flew 183 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and thirteen Air Medals. He went on to command Attack Squadron 35 aboard USS Nimitz.This is the story.

    Threatened by the draft in the late sixties, he enlisted in the Army to avoid becoming a grunt, yet ended up one anyway. He endured a grueling war in Vietnam and then returned to a country too angry to care. While his journey took unexpected turns, his choices got him there, so he did his best to react positively and keep moving forward.Udden delivers his story in a comfortable, friendly style. He conveys the experiences of basic training, advanced infantry training, and what it was like to live, work, guard, patrol, and fight in the jungle. The reader will feel the adrenalin rush of a firefight, the thrill of a wild ride dangling below a helicopter, and the humor in celebrating his 21st birthday on a firebase.Through his words and personal photographs, you will live through his journey exactly as he experienced it.

    An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.