World War Ii Air Combat

Get as close as you’ll get to a World War II–era P-51 Mustang without flying one yourself with this spellbinding collection of tales from the men who actually flew the planes into war. The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang first started appearing in real numbers in 1943, at the climax of...

The air war over Europe during World War II proved that combat in the sky can be even more devastating than combat on the ground. When the war ended, every major city in Germany was virtually destroyed. A German writer admitted that his own nation, in taking up the sword to conquer the world, had "summoned up those bands of furies which raced across the German skies".

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.

Donald Yates, the author of 10 military history books, takes you inside of Nazis Germany occupied Europe during World War 2. Ten American aviators share their experiences on the long road from being shot down to making it back to their United States Army Air force units in England. This is a military history short read of over 12,000 words.

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.

On August 18, 1945, US Army Sergeant Anthony J. Marchione bled to death in the clear, bright sky above Tokyo. Marchione, a gunner in the US Air Force, died, like so many before him in World War II, quietly, cradled in the arms of a buddy. Though tragic, Marchione's death would have been no more notable than any other had he not had the dubious distinction of being the last American killed in World War II combat.

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.

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African-American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.

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 ...

Pierre Clostermann DFC was one of the oustanding Allied aces of the Second World War. A Frenchman who flew with the RAF, he survived over 420 operational sorties, shooting down scores of enemy aircraft while friends and comrades lost their lives in the deadly skies above Europe. The Big Show, his extraordinary account of the war, has been described as the greatest pilot's memoir of WWII.

On the morning of August 15, 1945, Captain Jerry Yellin flew the last combat mission of World War II out of Iwo Jima. Today, Captain Yellin is a sharp, engaging, 93-year-old veteran whose story is brought to life by best-selling author Don Brown.

An empress demands her birthright . . . The Air War is the eighth book in the critically acclaimed epic fantasy series Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky. All is in turmoil as the world moves towards war. In Solarno, spies eye one another and ready their knives – while the people of Myna...

There have been volumes of books written about the development of US airpower and the technological specifications of each American or Allied aircraft. This is not one of them. This book focuses on the young men who answered the call to duty and were literally transformed from “farm boys to fighter pilots.”

Battle fatigue...shell shock...PTSD... terminology changes. The pain remains. Paul Eastman, a small-town Wisconsin boy turned P-40 fighter pilot, lands in the jungles of Assam and Burma in 1943. Lt. Eastman's compelling story, gleaned from his diary and letters home and illustrated with his personal photos, provides unique insights into the realities of combat life and death, punctuated by love and concern for the wife he left behind.

In 1903, the Wright brothers invented the airplane, and that event changed the rules of war forever. From war to war, technology has improved in an effort to achieve the ultimate aerial war machine. Pacific Media's Combat Aircraft tell us the history from the creation of the aero plane to the end of WWII.