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The best way for today's sailors to learn about a battle is from those who fought it. The Battle of Midway, commemorated annually in the US Navy, warrants close attention. This Naval Institute guide includes some of the most vibrant and informed accounts by individuals who fought on both sides of the June 1942 battle. The anthology pulls together memoirs, articles, excerpts from other Naval Institute books, and relevant government documents to help listeners understand what happened and explain why the battle was so significant to the naval service.

The world's worst air disaster happened more than 40 years ago on a remote Atlantic Ocean island, when two fully loaded 747 passenger jets collided after a horrendous series of human errors. One of the jets, KLM Flight 4805, was traveling more than 150 miles an hour and was within seconds of lifting off when it crashed into Pan Am Flight 1736 taxiing in its path. The loss of lives was staggering - 583 dead. The crash happened after a lengthy series of major and minor human errors. In the intervening years, has aviation advanced to the point that such a disaster can't happen again?

Generals during World War II usually stayed to the rear, but not Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. During D-Day and the Normandy campaign, these commanders of the 82nd "All-American" and the 101st "Screaming Eagle" Airborne Divisions refused to remain behind the lines and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their paratroopers in the thick of combat. Jumping into Normandy during the early hours of D-Day, Ridgway and Taylor fought on the ground for six weeks of combat that cost the airborne divisions more than 40 percent casualties.

Aerial warfare has dominated war-making for over 100 years, and despite regular announcements of its demise, it shows no sign of becoming obsolete. In this Very Short Introduction, Frank Ledwidge offers a sweeping look at the history of aerial warfare, introducing the major battles, crises, and controversies where air power has taken center stage, and the changes in technology and air power capabilities over time.

Shoulder to shoulder with Strategic Air Command B-52s throughout the Cold War, the big delta-winged Vulcans of the Britain's V-bomber force faced down the Soviet threat to the West. In 1982, they were just months from retirement when they flew in anger for the first time. It was to be a record-breaking mission of breathtaking audacity: a single bomber launched from a remote island airbase to carry out what would be the longest-range air attack in history. An 8,000-mile round-trip.

April 1982. Argentina invades the Falkland Islands. In response, Britain dispatches a naval Task Force. Eight thousand miles from home, its fate hinges on just 20 Sea Harrier fighters against the 200-strong might of the Argentine Air Force. Combining groundbreaking research with the pace of a thriller, Rowland White reveals the full story of the fleet's knife-edge fight for survival for the first time, and shows how the little jump jet went from airshow novelty to writing its name in aviation legend. And of how a small band of heroes won victory against impossible odds.

Heinz Knoke was one of the outstanding German fighter pilots of the Second World War. This vivid firsthand record of his experiences has become a classic among aviation memoirs and is a fascinating counterbalance to the numerous accounts written by Allied pilots.

For more than 30 years, Giora Even-Epstein flew fighters for the Israel Air Force, achieving recognition as a highly skilled military aviator and the highest-scoring jet-mounted ace with the most num­ber of confirmed victories in the French Mirage. Having overcome numerous hurdles just to learn how to fly, he went on to compile a record of Arab MiGs and Sukhoi kills that bettered any other combat aviators' tally in the entire world. This fast-moving autobiography details his experiences particularly in the intense conflicts of 1967, the Six Day War, and 1973, the Yom Kippur War.

The nearly half-million American air crewmen who served during World War II have almost disappeared. And so have their stories. Award-winning writer and former fighter pilot Jay A. Stout uses Unsung Eagles to save an exciting collection of those accounts from oblivion. These are not rehashed tales from the hoary icons of the war. Rather, they are stories from the masses of largely unrecognized men who - in the aggregate - actually won it.

Jay A. Stout breaks new ground in World War II history with this gripping account of one of the war’s most highly decorated American fighter groups. Stout combines the storytelling gifts and careful research for a seasoned historian with the combat experience of a former fighter pilot to tell the remarkable story of the 352nd Fighter Group. This isn’t just the story of a single fighter group; it’s the story of how the United States won the air war over Europe.

Strap into a mortar-fired parachute, a rocket-powered ejection seat, and fly with Col Chuck Lehman in the fastest single engine jet fighter ever built, the F-106 Dart. Feel the exhilaration of hurtling through the blue at a mile every 2.35 seconds, the “G” forces, and the satisfaction of keeping the bad guys out of our airspace. You’ll laugh at some of these stories, sweat out a few, and ask, “How could he have been so stupid?” in others.

Sometimes you do everything right, but it just isn't your day. A part fails and your helicopter comes apart in flight, or, another aircraft runs into you and the pieces of both fall to the ground below, or the enemy gunner pulls the trigger at just the right moment and his rounds find your aircraft in exactly the right spot to take it out of the sky. Whichever way it happens, it wasn't your day.

Between 1918 and 1955, 60 airmen were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and Two Bars. In this book, recorded for the first time together are the mini-biographies of those 60 along with the citations that accompanied their awards, or in some cases the recommendations for them. As the listener will discover, the range of airmen who received the DFC and Two Bars cover most of the ambit of World War II operations, be they fighter pilots, bomber pilots, night-fighter aircrew, aircrew navigators, engineers, etc, or reconnaissance pilots

During the Second World War, Flt Lt Richard Stevens led an extraordinary campaign as an RAF nightfighter. Known to contemporaries as "Cat's Eyes" and by the height of his success in July 1941 as the "Lone Wolf", Flt Lt Stevens was the RAF's highest scoring nightfighter pilot with 14 victories. What makes his story unique is that all this was achieved without the aid of radar or another crew member. Instead, Flt Lt Stevens used extraordinary skill, instinct, and innate marksmanship.

Letters from Bud is the remarkable firsthand account of the harrowing air war in Europe as told by WW2 flight navigator and bombardier John “Bud” Brandenburg, in his letters home during the conflict, from 1944-45. With guts, wit, and grace, Brandenburg records his experiences with the daring “Koltun crew”, which flew 30 missions over Europe. Through numerous strokes of fate, the crew survived a run of missions with the “bloody” 492nd Bomb Group, a unit that endured an 80 percent casualty rate as the men faced down the seemingly unstoppable German Luftwaffe.

In October of 1910, only four years before the outbreak of World War I, nobody knew whether planes, dirigibles, or balloons would prevail. Within a period of 17 days, this question was on prime display, as the dirigible America tried to cross the Atlantic; huge crowds gathered at horse-racing tracks to watch airplanes race around overhead; and ballooning teams from around the world took off from St. Louis in pursuit of the Bennett International Balloon Cup, given to the balloon that traveled the farthest.

Since he was a young boy, Joe Balzer dreamed of flying. He pursued his goal with passion and earned his pilot licenses, piling up hours of flight time with a wide variety of planes and jets with one overarching goal: to one day fly for a major airline. But Joe had a problem. He was an alcoholic and refused to admit to himself that he had a problem. His alcoholism caught up with him in March 1990, when Joe was arrested with two other pilots for flying a commercial airliner while under the influence of alcohol.

Curtis Lemay's life spanned an epoch in American military history—from his troubled background, heroic service in Europe, and firebombing of Tokyo to his guardianship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the cold war, frustrated career in government, and short-lived political run. LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay tells the whole story of the innovative pilot and navigator, brilliant strategist, unflagging patriot, and founder of modern strategic bombing.

From an expert in the Pacific theater of World War II comes the tragic story of the pilots who fought the last fight of the war during the first hour of peace When Billy Hobbs and his fellow Hellcat aviators from Air Group 88 lifted off from the venerable Navy carrier USS Yorktown early on the...

Frank Ledwidge offers a sweeping look at the history of air warfare, introducing the major battles, crises, and controversies where air power has taken center stage and exploring the changes in technology and air power capabilities over time. Considering whether bombing has ever been truly effective, he discusses whether wars can be won from the air and concludes by analyzing whether there is a future for manned air power, or if it is inevitable that drones will dominate 21st-century war in the air.