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Author: John Nichol
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312378066
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
Night after night they stifled their fears and flew through flak and packs of enemy fighters to drop the bombs that would demolish the Third Reich. The airmen of the United States 8th Army Air ForceAmerican and British Bomber Command were among the greatest heroes of the Second World War, defying Hitler in the darkest early days of the war and taking the battle to the German homeland when no one else would. Toward the end of the conflict, too, they continued to sacrifice their lives to shatter an enemy sworn never to surrender. Blasted out of the sky in an instant or bailing out from burning aircraft to drop helplessly into hostile hands, they would die in their tens of thousands to ensure the enemy's defeat. Especially vulnerable were the "tail-end Charlies"---for the Americans, which meant two things: the gunners who flew countless missions in a plexiglass bubble at the back of the bomber, and the last bomber in the formation who ended up flying through the most hell, and for the British, the rear-gunners who flew operations in a Plexiglas bubble at the back of the bomber. Following their groundbreaking revelations about the ordeals suffered by Allied prisoners of war in their bestselling book, The Last Escape, John Nichol and Tony Rennell tell the astonishing and deeply moving story of the controversial last battles in the skies of Germany through the eyes of the forgotten heroes who fought them. "This is the best account that has been written of the heroic American and British bomber crews . . . the best of its kind." ---George McGovern "Rivaling the best of Stephen Ambrose's work, Tail-End Charlies gives a breathtakingly intimate look at the lives, loves, and deaths of the brave airmen of the greatest generation. This fascinating book is as valuable for its stories of joyous life on the ground as it is for its sobering tales of death in the air. You see the whole picture of the war here from the eyes of the strong young men who fought it." ---Walter J. Boyne, bestselling author of Beyond the Wild Blue "Adds new dimensions to the saga of the air war in Europe. The eyewitness accounts, reported within the context of the battle against Nazi Germany, provide a sense of the ordeals, the terror, the gore, and the heroism of ordinary men thrust into the savagery of aerial combat." ---Gerald Astor, author of The Mighty Eighth
Author: John Nichol
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312378066
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Get Book
Book Description
Night after night they stifled their fears and flew through flak and packs of enemy fighters to drop the bombs that would demolish the Third Reich. The airmen of the United States 8th Army Air ForceAmerican and British Bomber Command were among the greatest heroes of the Second World War, defying Hitler in the darkest early days of the war and taking the battle to the German homeland when no one else would. Toward the end of the conflict, too, they continued to sacrifice their lives to shatter an enemy sworn never to surrender. Blasted out of the sky in an instant or bailing out from burning aircraft to drop helplessly into hostile hands, they would die in their tens of thousands to ensure the enemy's defeat. Especially vulnerable were the "tail-end Charlies"---for the Americans, which meant two things: the gunners who flew countless missions in a plexiglass bubble at the back of the bomber, and the last bomber in the formation who ended up flying through the most hell, and for the British, the rear-gunners who flew operations in a Plexiglas bubble at the back of the bomber. Following their groundbreaking revelations about the ordeals suffered by Allied prisoners of war in their bestselling book, The Last Escape, John Nichol and Tony Rennell tell the astonishing and deeply moving story of the controversial last battles in the skies of Germany through the eyes of the forgotten heroes who fought them. "This is the best account that has been written of the heroic American and British bomber crews . . . the best of its kind." ---George McGovern "Rivaling the best of Stephen Ambrose's work, Tail-End Charlies gives a breathtakingly intimate look at the lives, loves, and deaths of the brave airmen of the greatest generation. This fascinating book is as valuable for its stories of joyous life on the ground as it is for its sobering tales of death in the air. You see the whole picture of the war here from the eyes of the strong young men who fought it." ---Walter J. Boyne, bestselling author of Beyond the Wild Blue "Adds new dimensions to the saga of the air war in Europe. The eyewitness accounts, reported within the context of the battle against Nazi Germany, provide a sense of the ordeals, the terror, the gore, and the heroism of ordinary men thrust into the savagery of aerial combat." ---Gerald Astor, author of The Mighty Eighth
Author: Roy D. Erickson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964682108
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Author: Lt. Col. C. J. Hoppin USAF Ret.
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 145352441X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
Does class rank really matter? Q: What do you call the person who’s last in their class in medical or law school? A: Doctor or Lawyer. Q: And, what do you call the person who’s last in their class at West Point, Annapolis or the U.S. Air Force Academy? A: Lieutenant or Ensign. Same Date of Rank salutes 17 men and three women grads at the top and bottom, representing the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. They range from the “goat” or last man in West Point’s Class of 1942, who was the fi rst man in his class promoted to Brigadier General, to a 1999 Annapolis All-American rugby player who has served three tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps Captain. Read about combat leaders, admirals, astronauts, pilots, ship captains, business leaders, an historian, logistics expert, mayor, teacher and software guru. The book also provides class ranks of many famous academy grads from George Pickett and George Armstrong Custer (lasts) to Robert E. Lee and Douglas Mac Arthur (2nd and 1st) as well as Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, John McCain, and Jim Webb plus athletes like Roger Staubach of the NFL and David Robinson of the NBA. And, it includes timely information about how to apply to each of the three academies.
Author: Mick Manning
Publisher: Lincoln Children's Books
ISBN: 9781845076511
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
As a boy, Mick Manning listened to his father?s hair-raising tales about life as an RAF airgunner during the Second World War. Now, years later, he has carefully recreated his father's stories, writing them down as if his dad was speaking the words. In collaboration with Brita, he has illustrated them too. It?s for Charlie?s grandchildren ? and for everyone. Find out what it was really like to: Put up with food rationing ? Undergo RAF Training? Take off in a bomber? Face enemy fighters? Survive the Battle of the Bulge
Author: Robert Gandt
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767932420
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
Winner of the 2011 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature, The Twilight Warriors is the engrossing, page-turning saga of a tightly knit band of naval aviators who are thrust into the final—and most brutal—battle of the Pacific war during World War II: Okinawa. April 1945. The end of World War II finally appears to be nearing. The Third Reich is collapsing in Europe, and the Americans are overpowering the once-mighty Japanese Empire in the Pacific. For a group of young pilots trained in the twilight of the war, their greatest worry is that it will end before they have a chance to face the enemy. They call themselves Tail End Charlies: They fly at the tail end of formations, stand at the tail end of chow lines, and now they are catching the tail end of the war. What they don’t know is that they will be key players in the bloodiest and most difficult of naval battles—not only of World War II but in all of American history. The Twilight Warriors relives the drama of the world’s last great naval campaign. From the cockpit of a Corsair fighter we gaze down at the Japanese task force racing to destroy the American amphibious force at Okinawa. Through the eyes of the men on the destroyers assigned to picket ship duty, we experience the terror as wave after wave of kamikazes crash into their ships. Standing on the deck of the legendary superbattleship Yamato, we watch Japan’s last hope for victory die in a tableau of gunfire and explosions. The fate of the Americans at Okinawa, including a twenty-two-year-old former art student, an intrepid fighter pilot whose life abruptly changes when his Corsair goes down off the enemy shore, and a young Texan lieutenant who volunteers for the most dangerous flying job in the fleet—intercepting kamikazes at night over the blackened Pacific—is intertwined with the lives of the “young gods”: the honor-bound kamikaes forces who swarm like killer bees toward the U.S. ships. The ferocity of the Okinawa fighting stuns the world. Before it ends, the long battle will cost more American lives, ships, and aircraft than any naval engagement in U.S. history. More than simply the account of a historic battle, The Twilight Warriors brings to life the human side of an epic conflict. It is the story of young Americans at war in the air and on the sea—and of their enigmatic, fanatically courageous enemy.
Author: Lewis J. Poteet
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475987226
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
A lively, evocative, authoritative dictionary of words from the world community of flight, this book expresses the machismo, the terror, the care for technical excellence, struggles over the power of naming between PR for manufacturers and others, reporters, flight crews, ramp rats, PAX, cabin attendants. The exhilaration of a blue on blue flying day, the horror of a ground loop that goes bad, or a torque stall. Pilots, at the center, are extreme individualists in an activity that depends on teamwork mechanics, weather forecasters, air traffic controllers, computer experts, schedulers and trackers, dispatchers, ground crew. The stress produces variations in speaking that range from technical words to vivid slang exclamations (see Jesus nut). Sources include people from all the levels listed above, some aviation and space writers, Gulf War veterans, and required on-site research at air shows in Le Bourget, Farnsborough, Berlin, Ottawa, Abbotsford, and in Dayton, Pensacola (FL), CFB St. Hubert (Qc.), Dallas-Fort Worth, Renton (WA), Wichita (KS), Montreal, and at such WWII bases as Elvington, near York, England. The section on the names of aircraft includes both official names and the folk names given by those who actually had to fly or ride in them. I am amazed at how you have covered up all the profanity and kept such a clean book. You have made [this] look like a respectable language! Bill Robinson, Public Relations
Author: Gary A Best
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752466488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363
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Book Description
This wartime biography follows the life of a Second World War B-17 bombardier from the beginning of the war to its conclusion. Based on the 150 letters the airman, Fred Lull, wrote home to his mother, much of the horrors of what he experienced off the wing of his plane, aircraft destroyed, dismemberment by flak, go unshared. Fred did not want his mother to worry and could not tell her: ‘I noticed some movement and a flash of light out of the corner of my right eye. The plane that had been flying right next to us had exploded and simply disappeared.’ Using the bombardier’s combat flight record, research data and interviews of former B-17 crew members, the story unfolds, breaking through the barrier of an unwillingness and inability to tell loved ones of the smell and taste of war.
Author: Tony Redding
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473823544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
During 1942 and 1943 the striking power of RAF Bomber Command was transformed by the arrival of heavy bombers, advanced navigation and blind bombing systems, and new tactics to concentrate the bombers over the target and swamp the German defences. By October 1944 most of Germany's cities were in ruins, yet the bombing continued to intensify, reaching unprecedented levels in the final seven months of the air campaign. The value of further area raids was questioned during the opening months of 1945, yet the Allies destroyed the remaining cities in a bid to hasten the end of the war. The handful of German cities still largely unscathed in early February 1945 included Dresden, which was obliterated on 13 February. Ten days later, the South German city of Pforzheim was destined to suffer the same fate.??This book commemorates the efforts of the aircrew members who risked their lives, consolidating a host of intriguing first-hand accounts. It also considers Pforzheim as a representative community under National Socialist rule. The city's survivors remember the horror of the raid and its aftermath, including eventual occupation by French Colonial troops and, subsequently, American forces. Tony does an admirable job of presenting historical context when considering actions in times of extreme trauma and his narrative offers an intriguing, engaging and poignant evocation of the closing months of Bomber Command's war.
Author: Bryn Evans
Publisher: Pen and Sword Aviation
ISBN: 1526761734
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
Harrowing true stories of WWII Allied airmen who were shot down and survived, with maps and photos included. Allied air power made a major, arguably decisive, contribution to victory in the Second World War both in the European and Pacific theaters. But the cost in men and machines was horrific, with Bomber Command suffering 50% aircrew casualties. While many perished, others—shot down over enemy territory or water—survived only after overcoming extraordinary danger and hardship. Their experiences often remained untold, not just for the duration of the war but for many years. In this book, Bryn Evans has gathered together a wealth of unpublished stories from airmen of many nationalities, be they British, Commonwealth, or American. Some involve avoiding or escaping from capture, others surviving against all the odds, braving extreme elements and dodging death from wounds, drowning, or starvation. Importantly, the accounts of those who survived the battle in the skies cheating the enemy and the grim reaper give us a chilling insight into the fate of the many thousands of brave young men who were not so fortunate. The result is an inspiring and gripping read which bears testimony to human courage and resilience.
Author: Grace Wyvill
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 146693929X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 37
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Book Description
This is the story of a mischievous Bassett hound who got into so much trouble and destroyed so much property. It was however his sweet nature, lovable character, and the love of his family that saved him from the pound. He didn t have a mean bone in his big and barreling body.
