Bomber Pilot

Bomber Pilot PDF Author: Philip Ardery
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081314342X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
" Winner of the Best Aeronautical Book Award from the Reserve Officers Association of the United States "The sky was full of dying airplanes" as American Liberator bombers struggled to return to North Africa after their daring low-level raid on the oil refineries of Ploesti. They lost 446 airmen and 53 planes, but Philip Ardery's plane came home. This pilot was to take part in many more raids on Hitler's Europe, including air cover for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. This vivid firsthand account, available now for the first time in paper, records one man's experience of World War II air warfare. Throughout, Ardery testifies to the horror of world war as he describes his fear, his longing for home, and his grief for fallen comrades. Bomber Pilot is a moving contribution to American history.

Bomber Pilot

Bomber Pilot PDF Author: Philip Ardery
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081314342X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
" Winner of the Best Aeronautical Book Award from the Reserve Officers Association of the United States "The sky was full of dying airplanes" as American Liberator bombers struggled to return to North Africa after their daring low-level raid on the oil refineries of Ploesti. They lost 446 airmen and 53 planes, but Philip Ardery's plane came home. This pilot was to take part in many more raids on Hitler's Europe, including air cover for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. This vivid firsthand account, available now for the first time in paper, records one man's experience of World War II air warfare. Throughout, Ardery testifies to the horror of world war as he describes his fear, his longing for home, and his grief for fallen comrades. Bomber Pilot is a moving contribution to American history.

Jimmy Stewart

Jimmy Stewart PDF Author: Starr Smith
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 9780760328248
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Of all the celebrities who served their country during World War II--and they were legion--Jimmy Stewart was unique. "Bomber Pilot" chronicles his long journey to become a bomber pilot in combat.

A Luftwaffe Bomber Pilot Remembers

A Luftwaffe Bomber Pilot Remembers PDF Author: Klaus Häberlen
Publisher: Schiffer Pub Limited
ISBN: 9780764313936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A Luftwaffe Bomber Pilot Remembers is a bomber pilot's story from his early life prior to the ascension of the Nazi Party to power in Germany, his education and rise through the ranks of the Luftwaffe as a decorated bomber pilot, and even through his demotion at the hands of G�ring late in the war. Also covered are Haeberlen's tribulations in a prisoner of war camp run by the Allies, and his success in post war Germany as a businessman. This book offers a unique first person perspective on the development of the war and its effect on those that were not in the highest realms of power.

Hell Above Earth

Hell Above Earth PDF Author: Stephen Frater
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429956828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"After the twists and turns in Goering's many missions, Frater finishes with a stunning revelation . . . the author delivers an exciting read full of little-known facts about the war. A WWII thrill ride." - Kirkus Reviews The U.S. air battle over Nazi Germany in WWII was hell above earth. For bomber crews, every day they flew was like D-Day, exacting a terrible physical and emotional toll. Twenty-year-old U.S. Captain Werner Goering, accepted this, even thrived on and welcomed the adrenaline rush. He was an exceptional pilot—and the nephew of Hermann Göring, leading member of the Nazi party and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. The FBI and the American military would not prevent Werner from serving his American homeland, but neither would they risk the propaganda coup that his desertion or capture would represent for Nazi Germany. J. Edgar Hoover issued a top-secret order that if Captain Goering's plane was downed for any reason over Nazi-occupied Europe, someone would be there in the cockpit to shoot Goering dead. FBI agents found a man capable of accomplishing the task in Jack Rencher, a tough, insular B-17 instructor who also happened to be one of the Army's best pistol shots. That Jack and Werner became unlikely friends is just one more twist in one of the most incredible untold tales of WWII.

A Bomber Pilot’S Story

A Bomber Pilot’S Story PDF Author: Robert P. Neilson
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1524618004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 833

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Book Description
Flying a B-17 Flying Fortress with the Fifteenth Air Force out of Foggia, Italy, Lt. George H. Neilson describes the harrowing experiences of his twenty-eight combat missions as well as the ups and downs of life in the US Army Air Corps from enlistment to discharge (194345). Blending selections of his fathers letters to home and memoirs he recorded a half century later with documented background history, the younger Neilson tells the saga of the son of a Boston widow as he confronts the rigors of pilot-officer training and combat service in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations during the final six months of World War II in Europe. George depicts the humorous and mundane sides of army life as well as the terror-filled moments during bomb runs over targets in Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Austria as antiaircraft flak bursts battered the aircraft. Neilsons daily chronicles juxtapose moments when life and death hung in the balance, such as when he landed his crippled Fort in the Adriatic Sea, with the unexpected moments of splendor, such as when he dined in luxury on the Isle of Capri at a castle owned by the royal family of Italy. Flying in formation through clouds so thick that the plane thirty feet off his wing was invisible, George received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his ability as a skilled instrument pilot. He recounts youthful escapades on duty-free hours and the tales of life in Foggias mud-bound tent city in the spur of Italy. It includes the stirring story of his visit to a field hospital where his brother, a captain in the infantry, was recovering from a bullet wound incurred in the fighting in the Apennine Mountain campaign. Finally, the story tells of World War IIs fiery end and how he unknowingly worked on the secret research project to develop the atomic bomb in a lab at MIT before enlistment. For the student of history and aviation and its role in the Allied victory over Hitlers nefarious Reich, this microhistory will not disappoint.

Bomber Pilot

Bomber Pilot PDF Author: Leonard Cheshire
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781999812867
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Leonard Cheshire was one of the most highly decorated pilots of the Second World War. As the Royal Air Force's youngest Group Captain in 1943, he took a drop in rank and went on to command No. 617 Squadron and pioneer low level marking and precision bombing. For this, together with four years of fighting against the bitterest opposition during which he maintained a record of outstanding personal achievement, he was awarded the Victoria Cross. In 1945 he was an official observer of the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Post-war his humanitarian work on behalf of the disabled resulted in the establishment of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation (now known as Leonard Cheshire), the world's leading disability care charity. First published in 1943, Bomber Pilot is Leonard Cheshire's contemporary account of his experiences during his first three years with Bomber Command. His light style captures the exuberance of youth, yet also brings out the growing realization of the responsibilities and dangers facing the young aircrew of Bomber Command. He describes his experience of operating Whitleys with No. 102 Squadron, first as a novice co-pilot and later as captain with his own crew, providing a vivid description of the action for which he was awarded his first DSO. Following a brief interlude in North America he returned to join No. 35 Squadron as it introduced the Halifax into service before moving on to command No. 76 Squadron. In this new edition, Leonard Cheshire's original text is supplemented with an additional commentary by Dr Robert Owen, aviation historian and Official Historian of No. 617 Squadron Association. Providing additional details of the events described by Cheshire, this commentary places them in the broader context of the Bomber Offensive and includes a full record of Leonard Cheshire's operations and wartime awards.

The Man Who Flew the Memphis Belle

The Man Who Flew the Memphis Belle PDF Author: Robert Morgan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451233522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The riveting firsthand account of World War II pilot Robert Morgan, his crew, and the legendary Memphis Belle—written with Ron Powers, cowriter of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers. A powerful chronicle of loyalty, love, and heroism under fire, this is the unforgettable memoir of a member of the Greatest Generation who fought in America’s greatest battles—and of the war one man waged both in and out of the skies. High-spirited, young Robert Morgan was transformed from a fast-living, privileged playboy who grew up hobnobbing with the Vanderbilts into a steel-nerved pilot forged in the cauldron of World War II’s most dangerous and desperate aerial encounters. This is the triumphant tale of that transformation—and of the airplane and crew that never failed to bring him back home.

Candy Bomber

Candy Bomber PDF Author: Michael O. Tunnell
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
ISBN: 1580893368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
"World War II was over, and Berlin was in ruins. US Air Force Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen knew the children of the city were suffering. They were hungry and afraid. The young pilot wanted to help, but what could one man in one plane do?"--Dust jacket flap.

A Thousand Shall Fall

A Thousand Shall Fall PDF Author: Murray Peden
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 9781550024548
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
In what has been hailed as one of the finest war memoirs ever written, Murray Peden recounts his experiences as a bomber with 214 Squadron during World War II.

The Final Mission of Bottoms Up

The Final Mission of Bottoms Up PDF Author: Dennis R. Okerstrom
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826272673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
On November 18, 1944, the end of the war in Europe finally in sight, American copilot 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 predawn briefing at their base in southern Italy, had confided that their mission that day would be a milk run. But that twenty-first mission out of Italy would be their last. Bottoms Up was staggered by an antiaircraft shell that sent it plunging three miles earthward, the pilots recovering control at just 5,000 feet. With two engines out, they tried to make it to a tiny strip on a British-held island in the Adriatic Sea and in desperation threw out everything not essential to flight: machine guns, belts of ammunition, flak jackets. But over Pula, in what is now Croatia, they were once more hit by German fire, and the focus quickly became escaping the doomed bomber. Seemingly unable to extricate himself, Lamar all but surrendered to death before fortuitously bailing out. He was captured the next day and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner at a stalag on the Baltic Sea, suffering the deprivations of little food and heat in Europe’s coldest winter in a century. He never saw most of his crew again. Then, in 2006, more than sixty years after these life-changing experiences, Lamar received an email from Croatian archaeologist Luka Bekic, who had discovered the wreckage of Bottoms Up. A veteran of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Bekic felt compelled to find out the crew’s identities and fates. Lee Lamar, a boy from a hardscrabble farm in rural northwestern Missouri, had gone to college on the GI Bill, become a civil engineer, gotten married, and raised a family. Yet, for all the opportunity that stemmed from his wartime service, part of him was lost. The prohibition on asking prisoners of war their memories during the repatriation process prevented him from reconciling himself to the events of that November day. That changed when, nearly a year after being contacted by Bekic, Lamar visited the site, hoping to gain closure, and met the Croatian Partisans who had helped some members of his crew escape. In this absorbing, alternating account of World War II and its aftermath, Dennis R. Okerstrom chronicles, through Lee Lamar’s experiences, the Great Depression generation who went on to fight in the most expensive war in history. This is the story of the young men who flew Bottoms Up on her final mission, of Lamar’s trip back to the scene of his recurring nightmare, and of a remarkable convergence of international courage, perseverance, and friendship.