Wings over the Mexican Border

Wings over the Mexican Border PDF Author: Kenneth B. Ragsdale
Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM
ISBN: 029275759X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
A Texas historian reveals how a borderland ranch became the proving ground for American combat aviation and a flashpoint for US-Mexico relations. Against a backdrop of revolution, border banditry, freewheeling aerial dramatics, and World War II, Kenneth B. Ragsdale tells the story of Elmo Johnson’s Big Bend ranch in southwestern Texas. This remote airfield is where hundreds of young Army Air Corps pilots demonstrated the US military’s reconnaissance and emergency response capabilities and, in so doing, dramatized the changing role of the airplane as an instrument of war and peace. Ragsdale vividly portrays the development of the US aerial strike force; the men who would go on to become combat leaders; and especially Elmo Johnson himself, the Big Bend rancher, trader, and rural sage who emerges as the dominant figure at one of the most unusual facilities in the annals of the Air Corps. Ragsdale also examines how these aerial escapades effected border tensions. He provides a reflective look at US–Mexican relations from the 1920s through the 1940s, paying special attention to the tense days during and after the Escobar Rebellion of 1929. Wings over the Mexican Border tells a stirring story of the American frontier juxtaposed with the new age of aerial technology.

Wings over the Mexican Border

Wings over the Mexican Border PDF Author: Kenneth B. Ragsdale
Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM
ISBN: 029275759X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
A Texas historian reveals how a borderland ranch became the proving ground for American combat aviation and a flashpoint for US-Mexico relations. Against a backdrop of revolution, border banditry, freewheeling aerial dramatics, and World War II, Kenneth B. Ragsdale tells the story of Elmo Johnson’s Big Bend ranch in southwestern Texas. This remote airfield is where hundreds of young Army Air Corps pilots demonstrated the US military’s reconnaissance and emergency response capabilities and, in so doing, dramatized the changing role of the airplane as an instrument of war and peace. Ragsdale vividly portrays the development of the US aerial strike force; the men who would go on to become combat leaders; and especially Elmo Johnson himself, the Big Bend rancher, trader, and rural sage who emerges as the dominant figure at one of the most unusual facilities in the annals of the Air Corps. Ragsdale also examines how these aerial escapades effected border tensions. He provides a reflective look at US–Mexican relations from the 1920s through the 1940s, paying special attention to the tense days during and after the Escobar Rebellion of 1929. Wings over the Mexican Border tells a stirring story of the American frontier juxtaposed with the new age of aerial technology.

Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939

Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939 PDF Author: Maurer Maurer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description


Wings Over Sinai

Wings Over Sinai PDF Author: David Nicolle
Publisher: Middle East@War
ISBN: 9781911096610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Sixty years since the tripartite aggression of France, Great Britain and Israel against Egypt, this is the first account about Egyptian military operations during the Suez War of 1956 (or 'Suez Crisis', as it is known in the West). Based on research with the help of official Egyptian documentation and recollections of crucial participants, this book provides an unique and exclusive insight into the 'other side' of a war that many consider has marked 'the end of the British Empire'. From the Western point of view, the situation is usually explained in quite simple terms: in retaliation for President Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Universal Suez Canal Company - and thus the strategically important waterway of the Suez Canal - France and Great Britain (operating in concert with Israel) launched the operation codenamed 'Musketeer'. Divided into three phases, each shaded into the other; this aimed at obliterating the Egyptian Air Force, occupying the whole of the Suez Canal and toppling Nasser's government. From the Egyptian point of view, backgrounds were much more complex than this. Striving to modernize the country, a new and inexperienced government in Cairo launched a number of major projects, including one for the construction of a gigantic Asswan Dam on the Nile. The only Western power ready to help finance this project, the USA conditioned its support with basing rights for its military. With the last British soldiers still about to leave the country - and thus end Egypt's occupation by foreign powers for the first time in 2,000 years - Nasser found this unacceptable. Around the same time, Egypt found itself under pressure from Israeli raids against border posts on the Sinai. Left without a solution, Cairo decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in order to finance the Aswan Dam project, but also to start purchasing arms from the Soviet Union. In an attempt to bolster Egyptian defenses without antagonizing Western powers, Nasser concluded the so-called 'Czech Arms deal' with Moscow - resulting in the acquisition of Soviet arms via Czechoslovakia. Little known in Cairo at the time, such moves tripped several 'red lines' in Israel and in the West - in turn prompting aggression that culminated in a war. Wings over Sinai is, first and foremost, an account of the battle for survival of the Egyptian Air Force (EAF). Caught in the middle of conversion to Soviet-types, this proved more than a match for Israel, but were hopelessly ill-prepared to face the military might of Great Britain and France too. Sustained, days-long air strikes on Egyptian air bases caused heavy damage, but were nowhere near as crippling as the losses usually claimed and assessed by the British, French and Israelis. The EAF not only survived that conflict in quite a good order, but also quickly recovered. This story is told against the backdrop of the fighting on the ground and the air and naval invasion by British and French forces. Richly illustrated with plenty of new and previously unpublished photographs, maps (and 15 color profiles), this action-packed volume is illustrates all aspects of camouflage, markings and various equipment of British and Soviet origin in Egyptian military service as of 1956.

Wings over Ogaden

Wings over Ogaden PDF Author: Tom Cooper
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1910777501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 81

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Book Description
With Ethiopia in disarray following a period of severe internal unrest and the spread of insurgencies in Eritrea and Tigray, Ethiopia and its armed forces should have offered little opposition to well-equipped Somali armed forces which were unleashed to capture Ogaden, in July 1977. However, excellently trained pilots of the Ethiopian Air Force took full advantage of their US-made equipment, primarily their few brand-new Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighter-bombers, to take the fight to their opponents, win air superiority over the battlefield, and thus have their hands free to interdict the Somali supply links to stop the invasion cold. This air victory practically sealed the fate of the Somali juggernaut in Ogaden, especially so once Ethiopia convinced Cuba and the Soviet Bloc to support her instead of Somalia. In a fit of pique, Somalia forced all Soviet advisers to leave the country. Already bitter over similar experiences in Egypt in 1972, Moscow's revenge was designed as a clear message: nobody was to treat her in such fashion again. The USSR subsequently launched an air bridge to Ethiopia, unique and unprecedented in its extension and importance, delivering huge quantities of armament and equipment necessary for the Ethiopians to reconquer Ogaden, and beyond. In turn Somalia asked the USA for help and thus occurred an unprecedented switch of Cold War alliances. This volume details the history and training of both Ethiopian and Somali air forces, their equipment and training, tactics used and kills claimed, against the backdrop of the flow of the Ogaden war. It explains in detail, supported by over 100 contemporary and exclusive photographs, maps and color profiles, how the Ethiopian Air Force won the decisive victory in the air by expertly deploying the F-5Es - unequaled in maneuverability, small size and powerful armament - to practically destroy the Somali Air Force and its MiG-17s and MiG-21s.

Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939

Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939 PDF Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 142891563X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description


The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions, 1898T1934

The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions, 1898T1934 PDF Author: Benjamin R. Beede
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136746919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 779

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Book Description
A fascinating encyclopedic survey of the Spanish-Cuban/American War, the Philippine War, and the small wars between 1899 and the end of the occupation of Haiti in 1934. The name changes themselves are instructive. The usage of "Spanish-American War" ignores the fact that the war in Cuba had been la

China's Wings

China's Wings PDF Author: Gregory Crouch
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 034553235X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight. At the center of the maelstrom is the book’s courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation’s flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; foreign minister T. V. Soong; Generals Arnold, Stilwell, and Marshall; and legendary Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe. With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. Drawing on meticulous research, primary sources, and extensive personal interviews with participants, Gregory Crouch offers harrowing accounts of brutal bombing runs and heroic evacuations, as the fight to keep one airline flying becomes part of the larger struggle for China’s survival. He plunges us into a world of perilous night flights, emergency water landings, and the constant threat of predatory Japanese warplanes. When Japanese forces capture Burma and blockade China’s only overland supply route, Bond and his pilots must battle shortages of airplanes, personnel, and spare parts to airlift supplies over an untried five-hundred-mile-long aerial gauntlet high above the Himalayas—the infamous “Hump”—pioneering one of the most celebrated endeavors in aviation history. A hero’s-eye view of history in the grand tradition of Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London, China’s Wings takes readers on a mesmerizing journey to a time and place that reshaped the modern world.

The Old Army in the Big Bend of Texas

The Old Army in the Big Bend of Texas PDF Author: Thomas Ty Smith
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1625110480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Even before Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and the following punitive expedition under General John J. Pershing, the U.S. Army was strengthening its presence on the southwestern border in response to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Manning forty-one small outposts along a three-hundred mile stretch of the Rio Grande region, the army remained for a decade, rotating eighteen different regiments, primarily cavalry, until the return of relative calm. The remote, rugged, and desolate terrain of the Big Bend defied even the technological advances of World War I, and it remained very much a cavalry and pack mule operation until the outposts were finally withdrawn in 1921. With The Old Army in the Big Bend of Texas: The Last Cavalry Frontier, 1911–1921, Thomas T. “Ty” Smith, one of Texas’s leading military historians, has delved deep into the records of the U.S. Army to provide an authoritative portrait, richly complemented by many photos published here for the first time, of the final era of soldiers on horseback in the American West.

Wings over Persia

Wings over Persia PDF Author: Lou Martin
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 1412001072
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
The experiences of a captain flying, from 1976 to 1979, for a charter company indirectly owned by the Shah of Iran.

Harnessing the Airplane

Harnessing the Airplane PDF Author: Lori A. Henning
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806163747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
At its dawn in the early twentieth century, the new technology of aviation posed a crucial question to American and British cavalry: what do we do with the airplane? Lacking the hindsight of historical perspective, cavalry planners based their decisions on incomplete information. Harnessing the Airplane compares how the American and British armies dealt with this unique challenge. A multilayered look at a critical aspect of modern industrial warfare, this book examines the ramifications of technological innovation and its role in the fraught relationship that developed between traditional ground units and emerging air forces. Cavalry officers pondered the potential military uses of airplanes and other new technologies early on, but preferred to test them before embracing and incorporating them in their operations. Cavalrymen cautiously examined airplane capabilities, developed applications and doctrine for joint operations, and in the United States, even tried to develop their own, specially designed craft. Throughout the interwar period, instead of replacing the cavalry, airplanes were used cooperatively with cavalry forces in reconnaissance, security, communication, protection, and pursuit—a collaboration tested in maneuvers and officially blessed in both British and American doctrine. This interdependent relationship changed drastically, however, during the 1930s as aviation priorities and doctrine shifted from tactical support of ground troops toward independent strategic bombardment. Henning shows that the American and British experiences with military aviation differed. The nascent British aviation service made quicker inroads into reconnaissance and scouting, even though the British cavalry was the older institution with more-established traditions. The American cavalry, despite its youth, contested the control of reconnaissance as late as the 1930s, years after similar arguments ended in Britain. Drawing on contemporary government reports, memoirs and journals of service personnel, books, and professional and trade journals and magazines, Harnessing the Airplane is a nuanced account of the cavalry’s response to aviation over time and presents a new perspective on a significant chapter of twentieth-century military history.