Showing titles in Air Forces

The birth of the Royal Air Force marked a pivotal moment in military history. World War I was frozen in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare, which gave strategic urgency to any means of directly attacking enemy resources and morale. The new technologies of air power held promise, and by 1917 German bombers had begun attacking British cities. 

The incredible untold World War II story of Australian hero Barney Greatrex - from Bomber Command to French Resistance fighter. A high school and university cadet in Sydney, Barney Greatrex signed up for Bomber Command in 1941, keen to get straight into the very centre of the Allied counterattack. The RAF's strategic bombing missions faced the deadliest and most dangerous fighting imaginable as they attempted to break the will of the German people and destroy its industrial might.

In 1924, three years before Lindbergh flew to Paris, four young army airmen answered the call of General Billy Mitchell to save US aviation from destruction by the politicians by winning the race with a dozen other nations to make the first flight around the world. In primitive open-cockpit biplanes powered by unreliable engines and few airfields, they were given little chance of success or even survival.

On 13 July 2008, nine American Soldiers perished while fighting a pitched battle in the village of Wanat in Afghanistan's Waygal Valley. On that day the men of Company C, 2d Battalion, 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment, endured four hours of intense close-quarters combat and mounting casualties. The contingent of 49 United States and 24 Afghan National Army Soldiers valiantly defended their small outpost against a coordinated attack by a determined insurgent force armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

In 1954, the US Air Force launched an ambitious program known as WS-117L to develop the world's first reconnaissance satellite. The goal was to take photographic images from space and relay them back to Earth via radio. Because of technical issues and bureaucratic resistance, however, WS-117L was seriously behind schedule by the time Sputnik orbited Earth in 1957 and was eventually cancelled. Eyeing the Red Storm examines the birth of space-based reconnaissance from the perspective of WS-117L.

In the middle of August 1944, the Soviet Red Army crossed the eastern border of Romania and threatened the entire position of the Axis in the Balkans. On August 23, Romania's King Michael summoned the head of the government to the royal palace and asked him to break with the Germans and negotiate surrender terms with the Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter, Michael took Romania out of the war and issued an ultimatum that the German forces leave the country within three days.

To all appearances, Anthony "Tony" Korkuc was just another casualty of World War II. A gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, Korkuc was lost on a bombing mission over Germany, and his family believed that his body had never been recovered. But when they learned in 1995 that Tony was actually buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his nephew Bob Korkuc set out on a seven-year quest to learn the true fate of an uncle he never knew.

Eddie Rickenbacker was a WWI fighter ace. He arrived in France as a fresh greenie who knew little about flying and less about air combat. He learned everything he needed while fighting against the German air force and the famous Flying Circus commanded by Manfred von Richthofen. In this biography of his wartime experiences, Eddie tells us of his midair adventures and battles as well as how he learned to "defeat the hun" and earned the title of Ace.

Gerald "Jerry" Keyser and I became friends in 1966, when we were both in USAF Pilot Training. In 1970 I got out of the Air Force and Jerry stayed in. We remained friends and I followed along in awe as he went on to have the most amazing flying career I have ever seen. He flew 100 different types of airplanes, helicopters, and gliders during his 20 years in the Air Force, including a stint with NASA, and his 17 years as a test pilot for Hughes-McDonell Douglas-Boeing Helicopter Company in Arizona.

The epic World War II story of Australia's 75 Squadron - and the 44 days when these brave and barely-trained pilots fought alone against the Japanese. In March and April 1942, RAAF 75 Squadron bravely defended Port Moresby for 44 days when Australia truly stood alone against the Japanese. This group of raw young recruits scrambled ceaselessly in their Kittyhawk fighters to an extraordinary and heroic battle, the story of which has been left largely untold.

This was the first book to cover all of Cold War air combat in the words of the men who waged it. In I Always Wanted to Fly, retired United States Air Force Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel has gathered first-person memories from heroes of the cockpits and airstrips. Battling in dogfights when jets were novelties, saving lives in grueling airlifts, or flying covert and dangerous reconnaissance missions deep into Soviet and Chinese airspace, these flyers waged America's longest and most secretively conducted air war.

On August 29, 1944, the 15th US Army Air Force unleashed 500 bombers against oil and rail targets throughout central Europe. It dispatched the 20th Squadron of the Second Bombardment Group on what they regarded as an easy assignment: attack the Privoser Oil Refinery and associated railroad yards at Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. This "milk run" deteriorated into the bloodiest day in the Second Bombardment Group's history.

Civil Air Transport (CAT), founded in China after World War II by Claire Chennault and Whiting Willauer, was initially a commercial carrier specializing in air freight. Its role quickly changed as CAT became first a paramilitary adjunct of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, then the CIA's secret "air force" in Korea, then "the most shot-at airline in the world" in French Indochina, and eventually becoming reorganized as Air America at the height of the Vietnam War.

Linda R. Robertson argues that the development of the United States as a global military power arose from the influence of an image of air combat carefully constructed during World War I to mask the sordid realities of modern ground warfare. The Dream of Civilized Warfare carries this trajectory to its logical end, tracing the long history of the American desire to exert the nation's will throughout the world without having to risk the lives of ground soldiers - a theme that continues to reverberate in public discussions, media portrayals, and policy decisions today.

The theme of this book is the exploration of the theory and practice of dive-bombing, which tactic proved more precise than that of level-flight bombers and more effective than air-launched torpedo attacks against surface ships. It is also the author's purpose to come to a more general conclusion as to the effectiveness of dive-bombing under actual combat conditions. In this regard the words and observations of several dive-bomber aviators have been incorporated.

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company.

From April to November 1918, the American Air Service grew from a poorly equipped, unorganized branch of the U.S. Expeditionary Forces to a fighting unit equal to its opponent in every way. Hostile Skies details the actual battle experiences of the men and boys who made up the service squadrons at the front - Raoul Lufbery, Elliot Springs, Fiorello La Guardia, and, of course, Eddie Rickenbacker.

Looking ahead to future airpower requirements, this engaging and ground-breaking book on the history and future of American combat airpower argues that the USAF must adapt to the changes that confront it or risk decline into irrelevance. To provide decision makers with the necessary analytical tools, Jeffrey J. Smith uses organizational modeling to help explain historical change in the USAF and to anticipate change in the future.

On November 18, 1944, the end of the war in Europe finally in sight, American co-pilot Lieutenant Lee Lamar struggled alongside pilot Randall Darden to keep Bottoms Up, their B-24J Liberator, in the air. They and their crew of eight young men had believed the intelligence officer who, at the pre-dawn briefing at their base in southern Italy, confided that their mission that day would be a milk run. It was not....

U.S. Army Captain Kimberly N. Hampton was living her dream: flying armed helicopters in combat and commanding D Troop, 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, the armed reconnaissance aviation squadron of the 82nd Airborne Division. On January 2, 2004, Captain Hampton was flying an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter above Fallujah, Iraq, in support of a raid on an illicit weapons marketplace, searching for an illusive sniper on the rooftops of the city. A little past noon her helicopter was wracked by an explosion....