Tom's story, told in his own words, let's us share in his transformation from a college boy to a skilled fighter pilot, taking on the best the Luftwaffe has to offer. Excitement and surprises abound! Tom experiences the best—and the worst—of not only the skilled and ruthless enemy, but of our own military as well. Ranging from patient flight instructors to a psycho in the back seat, you can face it along with Tom. Join in the shocking realization of what the war means—REALLY means—as he and his mates witness devastation and heartbreak such as they never dreamed possible. Providing high altitude, high speed fighter escort for the growing numbers of Eighth Air Force bombers puts him in the midst of the most transformative period of the air war, including the famed "Big Week". Drawn from authorized Eighth Air Force mission descriptions, and supported by extensive historical research, "Red Flight, Break!" takes you on the long journey to victory. The story is fiction, but the history is real! Fasten your seat belt and come along!

    By the end of the action, very little ground had been won: the Allied Forces had made just 12 km. For this slight gain, more than a million lives were lost. There were more than 400,000 British, 200,000 French, and 500,000 German casualties during the fighting. Twelve Days on the Somme is a memoir of the last spell of front-line duty performed by the 2nd Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Written by Sidney Rogerson, a young officer in B Company, it gives an extraordinarily frank and often moving account of what it was really like to fight through one of the most notorious battles of the First World War. Its special message, however, is that, contrary to received assumptions and the popular works of writers like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, men could face up to the terrible ordeal such a battle presented with resilience, good humour and without loss of morale. This is a classic work whose reprinting is long overdue.This edition includes a new Introduction by Malcolm Brown and a Foreword by Rogerson's son Commander Jeremy Rogerson.

    The raiders would have to fly across occupied Europe at a perilously low level and drop their bombs at a mere 60 feet above the water to destroy the dam walls. Eight planes never returned.Bestselling author Max Arthur has collected together first-hand accounts of the preparation, practise, organisation and the raid itself, and the sense of emptiness and loss at RAF Scampton when 52 men failed to return. From RAF personnel and civilians to Germans who witnessed the raid, this landmark oral history collection paints a moving and personal picture of one of the most famous operations of the Second World War.

    All 144 passengers and six crew members were killed. In the ensuing days, a picture of the flight’s harrowing final moments began to emerge. Shortly after reaching cruise altitude, a 27-year-old first officer named Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit, took control of the plane and deliberately caused its descent. In Fatal Descent, journalist and aviation expert Jeff Wise travels to Lubitz’s hometown in Germany and pieces together a definitive and haunting portrait of the killer and the system he betrayed, revealing in heart-pounding detail how a lifelong super-achiever like Lubitz could have committed such an unthinkable act, what actually happened inside the cockpit, and whether current airline regulations leave us vulnerable to similar attacks in the future.Jeff Wise is a science journalist specializing in aviation and psychology. He is the author of the bestselling Kindle Single The Plane That Wasn’t There, about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. A licensed pilot of gliders and light airplanes, he also has stick time in powered paragliders, trikes, World War II fighter planes, Soviet jet fighters, gyroplanes, and zeppelins, as well as submarines, tanks, hovercraft, dog sleds, and swamp buggies. A contributing editor at Travel + Leisure magazine, he has written for New York, the New York Times, Time, Businessweek, Esquire, Details, and many others. His Popular Mechanics story on the fate of Air France 447 was named one of the Top 10 Longreads of 2011. His last book was Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger. A native of Massachusetts, he earned his Bachelor of Science degree at Harvard and now lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.

    Much more than a traditional military history, it is an account of the excitement of becoming a pilot and flying in combat over the Western Front, told through the words and voices of the aviators themselves.A World War II pilot himself, the memoirist and critic Samuel Hynes revives the ad­venturous young men who inspired his own generation to take to the sky. The volunteer fliers were often privileged-the sorts of college athletes and Ivy League students who might appear in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and sometimes did. Others were country boys from the farms and ranches of the West. Hynes follows them from the flying clubs of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale and the grass airfields of Texas and Canada to training grounds in Europe and on to the front, where they learned how to fight a war in the air. And to the bars and clubs of Paris and London, where they unwound and discovered another kind of excitement, another challenge. He shows how East Coast aristocrats like Teddy Roosevelt's son Quentin and Arizona roughnecks like Frank Luke the Balloon Buster all dreamed of chivalric single combat in the sky, and how they came to know both the beauty of flight and the constant presence of death.By drawing on letters sent home, diaries kept, and memoirs published in the years that followed, Hynes brings to life the emotions, anxieties, and triumphs of the young pilots. They gasp in wonder at the world seen from a plane, struggle to keep their hands from freezing in open­ air cockpits, party with actresses and aristocrats, rest at Voltaire's castle, and search for their friends' bodies on the battlefield. Their romantic war becomes more than that-a harsh but often thrilling reality. Weaving together their testimonies, The Unsubstantial Air is a moving portrait of a generation coming of age under new and extreme circumstances.

    Although it did not single-handedly win WWI, this extremely bloody battle did mark the end of the last major German offensive of the war. Miracle at Belleau Wood is a thoroughly researched, intelligent, and insightful account of one of the U.S. Army's most intense and ferocious actions of the Great War. It is also the story of how the Marines were transformed from a motley crew of shipboard soldiers and embassy guards into, ultimately, one of the world's most elite fighting units. This brand new account of one of the most stirring battles of the Great War is an essential read for anyone with an interest in that particular theatre and the history of U.S. Marine Corps.

    His last memory is putting the landing gear down. The NTSB and news media blame him and the deceased first officer Ned Partin for the accident that killed thirty-eight, and burned or severely injured ten. Bill knows from experience flying with Ned that they would have prevented the accident. While recovering from his debilitating injuries, Bill investigates why data that would exonerate him has disappeared. Why hasn’t the NTSB figured out there was something wrong with the rudder? And why does his airline’s management thwart his attempts to prove he shouldn’t be blamed? Those who caused the accident will go to extreme lengths to assure Bill does not uncover their secret agenda.

    I read the entire book in almost one sitting.”—Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book ReviewThe incredible story of the first African American military pilot, who went on to become a Paris nightclub impresario, a spy in the French Resistance and an American civil rights pioneerEugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the twentieth century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of eleven to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African American fighter pilot in history.After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.All Blood Runs Red is the inspiring untold story of an American hero, a thought-provoking chronicle of the twentieth century and a portrait of a man who came from nothing and by his own courage, determination, gumption, intelligence and luck forged a legendary life.

     Through the course of the next six months it would see some of the most ferocious fighting of the entire war. As soon as they landed they drove quickly into the Netherlands to prepare for an offensive into Nazi Germany. Their movements were dramatically altered as the German forces attempted to launch a momentous counter-offensive against the allies. The 84th division was sent to Belgium to plug a gap in the Allied line and fought back against the last ditch effort of Nazi forces. Draper takes the reader through every engagement that the division took part in from the first shots fired in anger through to crossing the Rhine into Germany and finally taking Hannover and making contact with Soviet forces in May 1945. Lt. Theodore Draper’s book is a unique account of the allied invasion of Germany. Rather relying on secondhand stories of the division’s actions months after the events had occurred, Draper was encouraged to go direct to the source, to the men themselves, from the commanding general to any private, for the most complete, firsthand information on every action. This book is largely based on hundreds of pages of such interviews, most of them within 48 hours of the unit’s relief and many of them while the unit was still fighting. “Though ostensibly a divisional history, Draper’s well-informed and interesting account is useful for an understanding of the war on the western front in general.” Robert Gale Woolbert, Foreign Affairs “This is the whole operation of the battle of Germany on the broad and individual level, the Siegfried Line, the fight to the Rhine, the Ardennes, the mad race to the Elbo, with credit attributed to men, companies, battalions where it is due.” Kirkus Reviews Theodore Draper was an American historian and political writer. He wrote many notable books during his career on a variety of subjects. During the Second World War he was inducted into the U. S. Army and worked in the historical section of the 84th Infantry Division. His book The 84th Infantry Division In The Battle Of Germany : November 1944-May 1945 was first published in 1946 and he passed away in 2006.

     Manila had fallen and MacArthur had retreated with the famous words, “I shall return.” Many thousands of American and Filipino prisoners of war were forced to march in atrocious conditions from Bataan to various prison camps with huge numbers dying along the way. Yet the Imperial Japanese Army was not able to subdue all of its enemies. A motley group of American and Filipino soldiers escaped into the depths of Mindanao and began to form a new force that would fight with coordinated guerrilla tactics against the occupying forces. Charles “Chick” Parsons, who previously had been in charge of the naval docks of Manila, led his men to cause terror among the Japanese as they stuck time and again in hit-and-run raids. Endlessly spying on the Japanese forces they became the eyes and ears for MacArthur’s forces who were preparing to retake the Philippines. Parsons became instrumental in organization of the guerrilla movement as they moved ammunition, medicine and arms from under the noses of the Japanese, installed coast watchers and radio stations, evacuated American and Allied personnel and civilians, and undertaking secret submarine missions to the Philippines. Travis Ingram drew much of the material for this book directly from Parsons who frequently interjects through the book with his own opinion of certain situations. This is the remarkable story of the man that MacArthur described as “the bravest man I ever met” and deserves to be read by all who wish to find out more about individual acts of heroism that took place in the most trying of circumstances. “A story of military and morale building that paid dividends to our advantage, told with the flourish and zest it deserves.” Kirkus Reviews “No small part of the credit for the reconquest of the Philippines goes to an American businessman turned Navy Commander — Mr. Charles Parsons — who organized guerrilla forces in a number of islands. This is the exciting narrative of how he did this job.” Foreign Affairs Travis Ingham was an American writer. His book Rendezvous By Submarine: The Story Of Charles Parsons And The Guerrilla-Soldiers In The Philippines was first published in 1945. He passed away in 1969.

    Author Max Miller spent many weeks at sea gathering material for his book, and presents his observations in an easy-to read fashion. Carrier! is intended to provide civilians with a glimpse into what life aboard these massive ships was like during World War 2.*New 2019 edition includes footnotes and images.

    Bomber Command s Commander-in-Chief, Sir Arthur Harris, hoped to wreak Berlin from end to end and produce a state of devastation in which German surrender is inevitable . He dispatched nineteen major raids between August 1943 and March 1944 more than 10,000 aircraft sorties dropped over 30,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. It was the RAF s supreme effort to end the war by aerial bombing. But Berlin was not destroyed and the RAF lost more than 600 aircraft and their crews. The controversy over whether the Battle of Berlin was a success or failure has continued ever since. Martin Middlebrook brings to this subject considerable experience as a military historian. In preparing his material he collected documents from both sides (many of the German ones never before used); he has also interviewed and corresponded with over 400 of the people involved in the battle and has made trips to Germany to interview the people of Berlin and Luftwaffe aircrews. He has achieved the difficult task of bringing together both sides of the Battle of Berlin the bombing force and the people on the ground to tell a coherent, single story. The author describes the battle, month by month, as the bombers waited for the dark nights, with no moon, to resume their effort to destroy Berlin and end the war. He recounts the ebb and flow of fortunes, identifying the tactical factors that helped first the bombers, then the night fighters, to gain the upper hand. Through the words of the participants, he brings to the reader the hopes, fears and bravery of the young bomber aircrews in the desperate air battles that were waged as the Luftwaffe attempted to protect their capital city. And he includes that element so often omitted from books about the bombing war the experiences of ordinary people in the target city, showing how the bombing destroyed homes, killed families, affected morale and reduced the German war effort. Martin Middlebrook s meticulous attention to detail makes The Bomber Battle of Berlin one of his most accomplished book to date. Martin Middlebrook has written many other books that deal with important turning-points in the two world wars, including The First Day on the Somme, Kaiser s Battle, The Peenemunde Raid, The Somme Battlefields (with Mary Middlebrook), The Nuremberg Raid 30-21st March 1944 and Arnhem 1944 (all republished and in print with Pen and Sword). Martin Middlebrook is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives near Stroud, Gloucestershire."

    In Fighting the Flying Circus, Captain Rickenbacker recounts his combat missions against the Germans in the skies over Europe during WWI.

    History buffs, especially military, will savor every episode on every page

    Uncover their mesmerizing, realistic stories of combat, courage, and distress in readable and balanced stories told from the front lines.Witness the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced U-boat packs and strategic bombing, unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners.World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, and whole populations lost their national identities.If you like gripping, authentic accounts of life and combat during WWI, then you won't want to miss WWI: Tales from the Trenches.