Author: Howard Mansfield
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493081098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
When Howard Mansfield grew up, World War II was omnipresent and hidden. This was also true of his father’s time in the Air Force. Like most of his generation, it was a rule not to talk about what he’d experienced in war. “You’re not getting any war stories from me,” he’d say. Cleaning up the old family house the year before his father's death, Mansfield was surprised to find a short diary of the bombing missions he had flown. Some of the missions were harrowing. Mansfield began to fill in the details, and to be surprised again, this time by a history he thought he knew. I Will Tell No War Stories is about undoing the forgetting in a family and in a society that has hidden the horrors and cataclysm of a world at war. Some part of that forgetting was necessary for the veterans, otherwise how could they come home, how could they find peace? I Will Tell No War Stories is also about learning to live with history, a theme Mansfield explored in earlier books like In the Memory House, which The New York Times called “a wise and beautiful book” and The Same Ax,Twice, said by the Times to be “filled with insight and eloquence … a brilliant book.”
Author: L. Douglas Keeney
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782008969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
The Pointblank Directive is the result of extensive new research that creates a richly textured portrait of perhaps the last untold story of D-Day. Where was the Luftwaffe on D-Day? Following decades of debate, 2010 saw a formerly classified history restored and in it was a new set of answers. This title analyzes three uniquely talented men and why the German Air Force was unable to mount an effective combat against the invasion forces. Following a year of unremarkable bombing against German aircraft industries, General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, placed his lifelong friend General Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz in command of the strategic bombing forces in Europe, and his protégé, General James “Jimmy” Doolittle, command of the Eighth Air Force in England. For these fellow aviation strategists, he had one set of orders – sweep the skies clean of the Luftwaffe by June 1944. Spaatz and Doolittle couldn't do that but they could clear the skies sufficiently to gain air superiority over the D-Day beaches. The plan was called Pointblank.
Author: Norman J. Fortier
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307414558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
FOR A FIGHTER PILOT IN THE MIGHTY EIGHTH, DEATH WAS ALWAYS A HEARTBEAT AWAY. When the skies of Europe blazed with the fiercest air battles in history, fighter pilots like Norman “Bud” Fortier were in the thick of it, flying four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet, dodging flak and dueling with Nazi aces. In their role as “escorts” to Flying Fortresses and Liberators, the fighter squadrons’ ability to blast enemy aircraft from the sky was key to the success of pinpoint bombing raids on German oil refineries, communication and supply lines, and other crucial targets. Flying in formation with the bomber stream, Fortier and the rest of his squadron helped develop dive-bombing and strafing tactics for the Thunderbolts and Mustangs. As the war progressed, fighter squadrons began to carry out their own bombing missions. From blasting V-1 missile sites along France’s “rocket coast” and the hell-torn action of D day to the critical attacks on the Ruhr Valley and massive daylight raids on German industrial targets, Fortier was part of the Allies’ bitter struggle to bring the Nazi war machine to a halt. In describing his own hundred-plus missions and by including the accounts of fellow fighter pilots, Fortier recaptures the excitement and fiery terror of the world’s most dangerous cat-and-mouse game.
Author: Jack R. Myers
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806180307
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
In this riveting narrative, Jack R. Myers recounts his experiences as a B-17 bombardier during World War II. Commissioned a second lieutenant in 1944 at age twenty, Myers began flying missions with the 2nd Bomb Group, U.S. Fifteenth Air Force. He learned firsthand the exhilaration—and terror—of being shot at and missed. Based in Italy, the Fifteenth Air Force flew strategic bombing raids over southern Germany, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. Less celebrated than the Eighth Air Force, which flew out of England, the Fifteenth, nevertheless, was pivotal in dismantling the German industrial complex. Myers offers an insider’s view of these missions over southern and central Europe. The reader goes with him into the highly exposed Plexiglas nose of the Flying Fortress, flying with him through the flak-filled skies of Europe and peering with him through his Norden bombsight at Axis targets. On average, a heavy-bomber crewman survived only sixteen bombing missions. Myers survived his allotted thirty-five missions before being honorably discharged in 1945.
Author: Jack Botts
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595261310
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
Author: Samuel W. Mitcham
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 1461751586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
New perspective on the most famous campaign of the legendary Desert Fox Details on the contributions and animosities of Rommel's subordinates Includes accounts of Tobruk, Gazala, El Alamein, and other battles In Libya and Egypt in 1941 and 1942, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel achieved immortality as the Desert Fox, battling and usually defeating numerically superior enemies. Until now, historians have generally overlooked the talented cast of characters who supported Rommel during this campaign. Distinguished military historian Samuel Mitcham recounts the battles of the Afrika Korps through the men who served Rommel as staff officers and commanders of divisions, regiments, and battalions--soldiers like Ludwig Crüwell and Walter Nehring, two of World War II's best panzer commanders, and Ernst-Günther Baade, who wore a kilt and carried a broadsword into battle.
Author: Earl A. Snyder
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1794870326
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
General Leemy's Circus: A Navigator's Story of the Twentieth Air Force In World War II is the action-packed account of the fearless men who flew the Superforts, the B-29's of General Curtis Lemay's XXI Bomber Command. The navigator's role was a critical one and involved making complex directional calculations during the chaos of combat. Navigator turned author Earl Snyder was a whiz at steering pilots through the whirlwinds of skirmishes and had a knack for thinking on the fly in the middle of the storm. His unique improvisational skills earned him a place in the Circus and the important series of bombings that ended the war. This is his story.
Author: Berry Craig
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625841817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
A look at the lesser-known heroics of Kentucky soldiers, from the French and Indian War to World War II. Daniel Boone is celebrated as a Kentucky frontiersman, but what about his service in the French and Indian War? Custer’s Last Stand in the Great Sioux War is legendary, but few remember Custer’s “next-to-last-stand” in Elizabethtown, where he was sent to suppress the Ku Klux Klan and hunt down moonshiners just before heading to the Montana Territory and into history. Join Kentucky historian Berry Craig as he unearths the forgotten heroics of Kentucky soldiers, beginning with the French and Indian War and ending with World War II. Featuring tales of warriors from a diverse range of backgrounds, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers honors generations of Kentuckians who put their lives on the line for their country.
Author: Truman Smith
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806181729
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
Between April and July 1944, Truman Smith Flew thirty-five bombing missions over France and Germany. He was only twenty years old. Although barely adults, Smith and his peers worried about cramming a lifetime’s worth of experience into every free night, each knowing he probably would not survive the next bombing mission. Written with blunt honesty, wry humor, and insight, The Wrong Stuff is Smith’s gripping memoir of that time. In a new preface, the author comments with equal honesty and humor on the impact this book has had on his life.
Author: Jesse Pettey
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1453565337
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 103
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Book Description
How often is it that we are fortunate enough to sit down and listen to first-person accounts of a distant past - not from a history book or a television documentary, but from a human being, who lived it, experienced it and is willing to share it. Jesse Pettey is one of these people who as a young man joined the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor because he felt it was his duty. He learned to fly a PT-19 and moved on to a BT-13. During World War Two, Pettey piloted a B-24 ́Liberator ́ and flew his first combat mission in August of 1944, to be followed by 34 more. One More Mission is not only an account of World War Two aerial combat missions with the 15th Air Force in Italy, but of a young man ́s journey through a gauntlet of emotion, growth and trying experiences. Mr. Pettey ́s glimpses into his past are a heartwarming journey to a different era, a different pace and a different lifestyle. His talent carries the reader along through his upbringing in East Texas through the precarious days of flight training and then on to the dangerous excitement of deadly combat over the skies of Europe. And all the while, you feel as if he ́s sitting across a table from you with a cup of coffee in hand, sharing the times of his life with a close friend. His story is well written yet personal, inspiring and yet humble. It is a story that demands sharing. One More Mission is a journey not to be missed. Reviewed by Denise M. Clark 6/2002: www.deniseclark.com
