Air Combat

What was it like to fly a MiG or Mirage in combat over Angola? Most books on the Angolan Bush War, especially those in English, present the South African perspective of events. Now a former MiG-23 Squadron Commander of the Cuban Air Force has collaborated with an ex-SAAF pilot to paint a remarkable new picture of the aerial conflict over Angola in the 1980s. In The MiG Diaries the recollections of Lt-Col Eduardo González Sarría are blended by Lionel Reid with those of air combatants from the Angolan, Cuban and South African air forces. Many are being published for the first time. Using ...

Silver Wing: Code Red Skies is a pulse-pounding, character-driven military suspense novel that brings together six unforgettable tropes: the Fearless Female Pilot (Samantha “Silver” Mercer), the Loyal Mechanic (Dutch, who knows her jet better than anyone), the Tech Genius (Blaze, who can hack or fix anything with a pulse), the By-the-Book Strategist (Lillian, balancing logic and moral lines), the Rogue with a Heart (Jackal, the unpredictable trickster with deadly instincts), and the AI Conscience (Piper, Silver’s voice of logic and silent partner in survival). Each character plays a ...

From Cold War dogfights to Desert Storm and beyond, Viper Alley unleashes the untold combat saga of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Blazing through five decades of aerial warfare, Viper Alley is the definitive chronicle of the F-16 Fighting Falcon—the world’s most successful multirole fighter. From the sands of the Middle East to the skies over Kosovo and Afghanistan, the F-16 has fought in more wars—and served under more flags—than any jet in modern history. Crafted from years of operational records and eyewitness testimony, Viper Alley reveals the untold combat stories behind the F-16...

Experience the exciting combat tales of both Allied and Axis pilots around the world during World War II. Wings of War encompasses the World War II air war from late 1939 through 1945 and provides a chronological snapshot not only of famous and significant events from the global air war, but...

Zigzag Men captures the dark humor of an unruly cadre of loosely led, overworked helicopter pilots, reluctant warriors who commute into combat from a remote airfield in Vietnam, zigzagging over the jungle, around one another, and through the indelible intensity of war. Quan Loi is their staging-point for flight operations during the day and a disreputable haven for hardcore, drug-altered malcontents during the long hours of darkness. When Newbies arrive at Quan Loi, the inevitable friendships and animosities become amplified by exhausting hours of combat flying, followed by immoderate ...

The Yalu River Boys is the true story of the forgotten men from the forgotten war. Follow a B-29 bomber crew as it battles Russian MiG-15 fighters in the heart of MiG Alley during the Korean War. Learn the heartbreaking truth of the communist prison camp gulags, the cruelty of the North Korean enemy, and the propaganda attacks from friend and foe. Marvin King joined the US Air Force in peacetime but soon found himself in the midst of jet-age aerial combat, captured and taken into China, and later subjected to the abject horror of a place in North Korea known only as The Caves.

Fred Tomasello Jr. served three years as an officer in the U. S. Marine Corps. He earned two Purple Hearts, five Air Medals and a heavy dose of Post Traumatic Stress. Born and raised in West Tampa, Florida, Fred graduated from the University of South Florida and worked 27 years at the Tampa Postal Service. Retiring in 1999, he and his wife Kathy Blair sold their home, bought a truck and trailer, and traveled cross-country for five years as full-time RV'ers before settling in Cheektowaga, NY, a suburb of Buffalo. Soon after September 11, 2001 Fred started writing and discovered the spiritual...

June 1966. Hollis Caudill, nineteen years old, stands in the open door of a Huey and learns what the valley costs. He is a door gunner with the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion, flying resupply and extraction missions into the Vinh Thanh Valley during Operation Crazy Horse — one of the bloodiest helicopter operations of the Vietnam War. He has an M60, a crew chief who speaks in facts rather than comfort, and a 1964 Ford Galaxie waiting under a tarp at home in West Virginia. By the time the operation ends, he will have carried the dead from a burning ridge, watched a ship go down in a ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The definitive history of combat aviation and fighter aircraft, from World War I to present INCLUDES 32 PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND 12 MAPS Lords of the Sky is the “dramatic, fast-paced, and definitive"" (Michael Korda) history of fighter pilots and aircraft and their...

It’s 1968. Hamilton Hancock is the Distinguished Graduate at his undergraduate pilot training class at Laughlin Air Force Base. He is on the fast track to become a fighter pilot, slated to fly an F-100, F-105 or F-4 in Vietnam. Then, the “needs of the service” intervenes, and he is assigned to fly one of the smallest, slowest aircraft in the Air Force inventory, the O-2A.

All Aces, No Jokers: The Wartime Memoirs of an American Fighter Pilot is the must-read first-person account of air combat by one of the most highly decorated, professional, and lethally talented warriors in modern history. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas “Axe” Littleton is a veteran of Just Cause, Desert Storm, Somalia, the No-Fly Zones over Iraq, the Balkan Wars, the Kosovo Air War, Afghanistan, and the second Gulf War. He was highly decorated, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross, six Air Medals, and three Aerial Achievement Medals for heroism while logging more than 600 combat hours ...

The 1972 Easter Offensive was a four-prong attack into South Vietnam. An Loc astride Highway 13 from Cambodia to Saigon was a strategic target from the North Vietnamese Army. A handful of US Army Advisors were determined to deny this prize to the North Vietnamese Army that came at them in the form of three divisions. Rallying the South Vietnamese defenders, they would curtail all attempts to seize this strategically important town. The Battle of An Loc presents the actions of the battle in the sequence they occurred and credits those that fought there. The conversations are what would have ...

…Ben Het has tanks in the wire! “Hawk Claw is engaging,” the pilot reports firing the first TOW missile ever from a helicopter in combat. Fire Base Delta had already been over run and Fire Base Charlie was fighting for its life. How much would fall before the North Vietnamese army was knocking on the doors of the key city of Kontum? This was the third phase of the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive Campaign of 1972. Standing across the country between them and the fall of Saigon was a poorly led South Vietnamese Army, brave South Vietnamese soldiers, and US Advisors. How much ground ...

This is the story of the life and death of Lt. Col. Avi Lanir (1940-1974)—the most senior Israeli pilot to fall into Syrian captivity during the Yom Kippur War, and the only one who did not return alive. Lanir died after brutal torture, without betraying the critical secret the Israeli Air Force had entrusted to his care. The body was defeated, yet the human spirit soared and triumphed. In these stormy and turbulent times, here is the story of a man whose brief spring touched the seasons of a nascent Israel. Israeli author and editor Yael Yannay has woven a moving, inspiring biographical ...

Duty. Honor. My country, right or wrong, drives the young fighter pilots of Dusty Squadron, from flack in the face above the A Shau Valley to napalm in the jungle to midnight gunfights over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Top Gun F-100 pilot John Ellsworth, the impetuous Son of Thunder, is the most zealous of the lot, and he pays dearly. A story of redemption in a war that changed the American culture.

He hunts by night. But it’s the ghosts of war that won’t let him rest. From the award-winning author of Sunward I’ve Climbed and The Shouting Wind comes the heart-pounding third novel in Frank A. Mason’s acclaimed Sunlit Silence series - an unflinching portrayal of sacrifice, vengeance, and survival in WWII’s deadliest skies. Flight Lieutenant Trip Gibson has lost more than comrades. The war has taken friends, lovers, and pieces of his soul. Now flying with the RAF’s elite night fighters, Trip takes to the skies under cover of darkness - haunted, hardened, and hell-bent on ...

Faster than fear. Deadlier than doubt. Braver than most men dare to be. From the skies over Europe to the vast expanse of the Pacific, America’s fighter pilots flew into danger armed with nothing but speed, skill, and unflinching resolve. Aces of Valor brings to life the true Medal of Honor stories of those who fought in the clouds and came back legends—or didn’t come back at all. This ninth volume in the acclaimed Medal of Honor series honors the exceptional courage of World War II fighter pilots: men who chased enemy bombers through flak-filled skies, who held the line above D-...

July, 1993: Pete Yates is in his early 50s, a career airline pilot who went on strike when a rapacious Wall St. financier raided his airline years before. Now he's out of work and out of money, trying to figure out how to make a living, when he encounters his old U.S. Navy wingman, who now owns a huge vintage warbirds air-show and aircraft trading company. Offered a job as a pilot, Yates swallows his pride and takes the job--and his life takes off in a direction he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams (and as a former Naval Aviation attack pilot with two tours in Vietnam, he has ...

A World War II Military Thriller Inspired by True Events of the Winter War In the frozen skies of 1939 Finland, death doesn’t come from above—it hunts in formation. As the Soviet invasion begins, Finnish fighter ace Lieutenant Veikko Niemi takes to the air in his outclassed Fokker D.XXI, battling overwhelming numbers in defense of his homeland. But something is different this time. The Soviet pilots aren't flying blind bombing runs—they’re coordinated, precise, and deadly. Led by the enigmatic Major Grigori Chernyavin, a disgraced stunt pilot returned from Stalin’s purges, the ...

The brief was correct. Three men are still dead. Major Frank Cable flies the A-10 Warthog — the ugliest, slowest, most lethal close air support aircraft in the American arsenal. Staff Sergeant David Reyes controls fires from the ground, guiding the aircraft to its targets through a nine-line radio brief that leaves no room for error. Their only connection is a radio frequency. Their only shared language is the protocol. Over nineteen days in the Syrian desert, Cable and Reyes execute the mission with the precision the system demands. The preflight is correct. The nine-line is correct. The...