Author: Brian Cull
Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
ISBN: 1908117966
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
This WWII history recounts how RAF pilots, outgunned by superior Japanese aircraft, nevertheless flew and fought their way to victory. In 1940, the Royal Air Force Purchasing Commission acquired more than 100 Brewster B-339 Buffalo fighter planes from the US. But when the aircraft were deemed below par for service in the UK, the vast majority were diverted for use in the Far East, where it was believed they would be superior to any Japanese aircraft encountered should hostilities break out there. This assessment was to prove tragically mistaken. When war erupted in the Pacific, the Japanese Air Forces proved vastly superior in nearly all aspects. Compounding their advantage was the fact that many of the Japanese fighter pilots were veterans of the war against China. By contrast, most of the young British, New Zealand, and Australian pilots who flew the Buffalo on operations in Malaya and in Singapore were little more than trainees. Yet these fledgling fighter pilots achieved much greater success than could have been anticipated. Buffaloes Over Singapore tells their story in vivid detail, complete with previously unpublished source material and wartime photographs.
Author: Brian Cull
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Hurricanes over Singapore is the companion volume to the successful Buffaloes over Singapore published in 2003. It continues the story of the RAF's gallant but futile attempt to stop the might of the Japanese invasion force in its quest to conquer not only Singapore, but also Sumatra and Java and all the other islands that constituted the Netherlands East Indies. The Hurricanes went into action over Singapore on 20 January 1942 and the last two aircraft made the final flight at Java on 8 March that year. During the intervening time the Hurricane pilots and ground crew - British, New Zealanders, Australians, Canadians, Dutch and Americans - gave their all, with many making the supreme sacrifice. The majority of survivors would spend the next 3 1⁄2 years as prisoners of the Japanese - and some of their heart-rending stories are detailed here. This expertly researched account, the most comprehensive to date, and accompanied by rare photographs, is told wherever possible by the pilots themselves, the majority of whom were young and inexperienced. Their efforts should not be forgotten and this book is a dispassionate tribute to those who fell in battle, those who died as prisoners and those who survived the trials and tribulations of imprisonment.
Author: Kari Stenman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472804562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 159
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Book Description
A complete survey of all of the pilots who achieved Aces status using the Brewster F2A Buffalo. Although designed and built for the US Navy, the F2A fought in only one major US engagement, the battle of Midway, in which F2A pilots managed to shoot down a number of Japanese fighters. Soon replaced by the navy, the F2A was exported to Britain, where it was nicknamed the 'Buffalo' thanks to its stubby appearance. The British sent most of these fighters to the Far East where they were used in the defence of Singapore and Malaya. It was in the Winter War, however, that the F2A truly found a home. Calling the plane simply the Brewster, the Finnish flew it against the invading Russians. As this volume shows, overall 37 Finns achieved ace status flying the Brewster, and it was the Finnish fighter of choice until succeeded by the Bf 109 in 1943.
Author: Peter Davies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317868609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
The Nazi regime in Germany was terrible enough without even accounting for the policy of collaboration. So what extra does collaboration say about Hitler and his plans for Europe? Peter Davies explores the mindset and political attitudes of Hitler and also many other controversial pro-Nazi leaders in Western Europe, Scandanavia, Central and Eastern Europe, and also beyond. Delving into four different "types" of collaboration: political, financial, the Holocaust, and collaboration at a social level, he asks some difficult questions. The story of collaboration is brought up to date, assessing both the legacy and its contemporary parallels.
Author: Ralph F. Wetterhahn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147666997X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
During the first 10 months of the war in the Pacific, Japan achieved air supremacy with its carrier and land-based forces. But after major setbacks at Midway and Guadalcanal, the empire's expansion stalled, in part due to flaws in aircraft design, strategy and command. This book offers a fresh analysis of the air war in the Pacific during the early phases of World War II. Details are included from two expeditions conducted by the author that reveal the location of an American pilot missing in the Philippines since 1942 and clear up a controversial account involving famed Japanese ace Saburo Sakai and U.S. Navy pilot James "Pug" Southerland.
Author: Colin Smith
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141906626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 969
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Book Description
Churchill's description of the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, after Lt-Gen Percival's surrender led to over 100,000 British, Australian and Indian troops falling into the hands of the Japanese, was no wartime exaggeration. The Japanese had promised that there would be no Dunkirk in Singapore, and its fall led to imprisonment, torture and death for thousands of allied men and women. With much new material from British, Australian, Indian and Japanese sources, Colin Smith has woven together the full and terrifying story of the fall of Singapore and its aftermath. Here, alongside cowardice and incompetence, are forgotten acts of enormous heroism; treachery yet heart-rending loyalty; Japanese compassion as well as brutality from the bravest and most capricious enemy the British ever had to face.
Author: Aurora Donzelli
Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
ISBN: 9789813251144
Category : Sociolinguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The Toraja highlanders of Indonesia use the expression "one or two words" to refer euphemistically to their highly elaborate form of political speechmaking. Taking off from this understatement, which signals the meaningfulness of transient acts of speech, One or Two Words offers an analysis of the shifting power relations between centers and peripheries in one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, Aurora Donzelli explores how people forge forms of collective belonging to a distinctive locality through the exchange of spoken words, WhatsApp messages, ritual gifts of pigs and buffaloes, and the performance of elaborate political speeches and ritual chants. Donzelli describes the complex forms of cosmopolitan indigeneity that have emerged in the Toraja highlands during several decades of encounters with a variety of local and international interlocutors, and by engaging wider debates on the dynamics of cultural and linguistic change in relationship to globalizing influences, the book sheds light on a neglected dimension of post-Suharto Indonesia: the recalibration of power relations between national and local languages. One or Two Words will be of interest to scholars of language, politics, power relationships, identity, social change, and local responses to globalizing influences.
Author: Tim Vigors
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1908117834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
A newly discovered “exhilarating and moving memoir” of an RAF fighter pilot in World War II (Daily Mail). It is not often that a long-hidden gem of a manuscript is published, bringing a moment in WWII history to vivid life for today’s readers. Geoffrey Wellum’s First Light was one example. The memoir of Timothy Vigors is another. Born in Hatfield but raised in Ireland and educated at Eton and Cranwell, Vigors found himself in France in 1940 flying Fairey Battle bombers. After the Fall he joined the fighters of 222 Squadron, with whom he saw frantic and distinguished service over Dunkirk and persevered through the dangerous days of the Battle of Britain, when he became an ace. Vigors transferred to the Far East in January 1941 as a flight commander with 243, then to 453 Squadron RAAF, and on December 10 of that year he led a flight of Buffaloes to cover the sinking Prince of Wales and Repulse. Dramatically shot down, burnt and attacked on his parachute, he was evacuated to Java, and from there, to India. As he describes these experiences in his handwritten account, the author provides a fascinating and valuable record, a newly discovered personal narrative of air combat destined to be seen as a classic.
Author: Brian Cull
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781902304915
Category : Hurricane (Fighter plane)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Based on the classic 1987 Grub Street publication, Malta: The Hurricane Years, telling the story of the pilots of the RAF who flew Hurricanes in defense of Malta, June 1940 to April 1942. Since the earlier publication, a number of personal diaries and journals have been found. Especially valuable are the personal experiences of Flt Lt James Pickering AFC, who flew Hurricanes with the 261 Squadron. He has also written the Foreword and provided many previously unpublished photographs.
Author: Anushka Ravishankar
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0618997849
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 51
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Book Description
A lonely baby elephant, separated from his herd of elephants, meets a herd of buffaloes and decides to stay with them, but when they meet up with some elephants, he must make an important decision.
