Military Air Combat

…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 ...

Four days before Christmas in 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail - a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber with the squeeze of a trigger.

An account of the over 450 combat missions flown by the author in the Vietnam War. The author is a highly decorated fighter pilot having been awarded three Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, and the Purple Heart. His account of being shot over North Vietnam and living to tell will keep you on the edge of your seat. His stories are filled with dialogue bringing the combat action directly to the reader. His method to overcome boredom was most unconventional as he flew 28 additional missions in helicopters and FAC aircraft. His account of visiting a Special Forces base where he ...

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 ...

In the war-torn skies over Europe, fate thrusts an unlikely squadron into the fight. When Captain Jack Carson and his pilots arrive in England, they have no aircraft, no missions, and no way to join the battle. That is, until the British make an unprecedented offer—Spitfires, the finest fighter planes in the world. With this golden opportunity comes immense pressure: the Americans must prove themselves against the best pilots Germany has to offer. Through the eyes of the cautious yet steadfast Jack Carson, the daring young ace Tommy Baker, the brilliant mechanic Stella Ward, and the ...

Discover true stories of the silent heros that live among us with these moving and powerful recollections of war, told by the men and women who lived them. “The stories America needs to hear” —Admiral William H. McRaven, US Navy (Ret.) Walk in my Combat Boots is a powerful collection...

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 ...

At the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small upstate New York community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front. Seventy years later, a history teacher tracks down the veterans with a connection to “Hometown, USA” who fought the war in the air over Europe, men who were tempered in the tough times of the Great Depression and forged in battle.

Since their introduction, aircraft have become a key aspect of any conflict between nations. Aircraft are used to provide reconnaissance, transportation, airborne radar, electronic jamming, air-to-air combat and of course ground attack. Ground attack is performed by a range of aircraft types encompassing strategic (bombers), tactical bombers (fighter-bombers) and helicopters. Ground attack weapons launched from these aircraft include guided and unguided bombs, rockets, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and cannon fire. Ground targets include enemy AFV’s, artillery ...

He’s survived the Blitz and the desert. His hardest battles are still to come. From award-winning author Frank A. Mason comes On Silvered Wings, the breathtaking fourth installment in the critically acclaimed Sunlit Silence series. This is an unforgettable journey through duty, desire, and the shifting skies of World War II. Major Trip Gibson has stared death in the face from Spain to France and Britain. Now, with America fully at war, he’s handed a new mission. Help shape the future of air combat and train the next wave of U.S. fighter pilots. His weapon is the P-38 Lightning, sleek ...

This insightful chronicle takes listeners inside the experiences of America's fighter pilots and bomber crews, an incredible assortment of men who, in nearly four years of warfare all over the globe, suffered over 120,000 casualties, with over 40,000 killed. Their stories span the Earth, into every corner of the combat theaters in both Europe and the Pacific. And the aircraft explored are as varied, tough, and legendary as the men who flew them.

The mighty, iconic A-10 Warthog was first thrust into battle in Operation Desert Storm. The men who took it through walls of flak and surface-to-air missiles to help defeat the world's fourth-largest army were as untested as their airplanes, so they relied on personal determination and the amazing A-10 to accomplish their missions, despite the odds.

Stephen E. Ambrose, acclaimed author of Band of Brothers and Undaunted Courage, carries us into the skies of World War II aviation, flying aboard the crowded and dangerous B-24 bombers as their crews fought to destroy the German war machine and secured Allied victory. The young men who flew the...

David R. “Buff” Honodel was a cocky young man with an inflated self-image when he arrived in 1969 at his base in Udorn, Thailand. His war was not in Vietnam; it was a secret one in the skies of a neighboring country almost unknown in America, attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail that fed soldiers and supplies from North Vietnam into the South. Stateside he learned the art of flying the F-4, but in combat, the bomb-loaded fighter handled differently, targets shot back, and people suffered. Inert training ordnance was replaced by lethal weapons.

In the summer of 1967, Mark Garrison had dropped out of college at Southern Illinois University just before entering his third year. He had run out of money and had to work for a while. These were the days before the lottery and the draft soon came calling. In order to somewhat control his own future, he enlisted in the US Army's helicopter flight school program. Little did he know that this adventure would be the most profound experience of his life.

For more than three decades, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy’s premier carrier-based, multirole fighter jet. From its harrowing combat missions over Libya to its appearance on the silver screen in movies like Top Gun and Executive Decision, the F-14 has become an icon of American air power. Now, for the first time in a single volume, Tomcat Fury explores the illustrious combat history of the F-14, from the Gulf of Sidra to the Iran-Iraq War to the skies over Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror.

Outnumbered. Outgunned. Never Out of the Fight. December 1939. Finland stands on the edge of annihilation. Soviet bomber formations grow larger by the day and fighter escorts strike with machine-tight discipline. The architect behind the onslaught, Colonel Kozlov, studies the Finnish air force with a scholar’s patience and a butcher’s efficiency. Lieutenant Veikko Niemi has survived longer than most, flying a fighter held together by scavenged parts and willpower alone. His latest mission, a near-suicidal strike on a Soviet airfield, buys Finland a few precious hours, but it also ...

In this gripping Dieselpunk war story, a Tesla-powered weapon threatens to shift the balance of World War I—not just between empires, but within the hearts of those ordered to deploy it. Verdun, 1916. Beneath the smoke-draped skies of the Meuse, Lieutenant Louis Carrel climbs into the freezing night with orders to intercept a German bomber wing. But his payload isn't shrapnel or gas. Slung under the wing of his aging Voisin is a weapon born of secrecy and lightning, a beam device too unstable for doctrine, too powerful to control. Command calls it progress. The crews on the ground call it...

A lone squadron. A frozen front. And the might of the Soviet Union overhead. When Stalin’s bombers strike without warning, Finnish pilot Veikko Niemi leads his understrength squadron into the teeth of the Soviet onslaught. With nothing but outdated Fokker D.XXIs and frozen courage, Niemi launches daring intercepts against overwhelming odds. But a new threat emerges, Colonel Kozlov, a methodical Soviet commander who turns the air war into a calculated game of attrition. As the temperature plummets and tensions rise, Veikko must adapt or watch his men vanish into the frost and fire. Blood ...

Militaries need fast and powerful machines in the air. Fighter jets, cargo planes, and other amazing aircraft zoom over land and water to get the job done!