195 Centre Street, P-51 Mustangs, And, Me

195 Centre Street, P-51 Mustangs, And, Me

Author: Ralph Joseph Ferrusi

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2021-09-29

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1663227659

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

195 Centre Street: It’s summertime, and the kitchen windows are open and a warm, gentle breeze is blowing the spotless white lace curtains into the room. P-51 Mustangs: In my opinion, it’s the most perfect airplane ever to take to the skies. And, Me: I never “wanted to be a writer”. I wanted to be a pilot, and fly P-51 Mustangs like Don Gentile, and Ratsy Preddy. So, I took a flying lesson, and found I really didn’t like flying. My Life-Long Dream of Being a Pilot shattered, the next day I wrote my first Award-Winning newspaper column, and, it was published. Yeah, right... I began writing this book in 2015, putting together some ruminations and reflections. I slowly added to it over the years: new things I wrote, old things I discovered I had written, some things that other people wrote that made me laugh out loud, or, knocked my socks off. Welcome to: 195 Centre Street, Buchanan, New York, U.S.A. P-51 Mustangs, B-17’s, B-24’s, B-25’s, PBY’s, F-82’s. Auschwitz, Birkenau, Vietnam, 9/11. Terciera in the Azores, Montecatini Alto in Tuscany and Rodney Bay on Saint Lucia. A 1936 Ford Five-Window Coupe and a 1963 Sting Ray Split-Window Coupe. Walking from Maine to Georgia—twice—on the world-famous Appalachian Trail. Allesandro Botticelli, Les Mis, Chateau Petrus. “Winning”, paper clips, and farts. And, A Thousand (Or So) Things You Don’t Know About Heart Attacks...


Combat Squadrons of the Air Force; World War II.

Combat Squadrons of the Air Force; World War II.

Author: Maurer Maurer

Publisher:

Published: 1969

Total Pages: 856

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of squadron histories has been prepared by the USAF Historical Division to complement the Division's book, Air Force Combat Units of World War II. The 1,226 units covered by this volume are the combat (tactical) squadrons that were active between 7 December 1941 and 2 September 1945. Each squadron is traced from its beginning through 5 March 1963, the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the 1st Aero (later Bombardment) Squadron, the first Army unit to be equipped with aircraft for tactical operations. For each squadron there is a statement of the official lineage and data on the unit's assignments, stations, aircraft and missiles, operations, service streamers, campaign participation, decorations, and emblem.


Aspects of Arnhem

Aspects of Arnhem

Author: Richard Doherty

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2023-09-30

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1399043951

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Almost 80 years on the battle for the Arnhem Rhine crossing remains controversial. Opinion on its justification and success differs widely. This superbly researched book, written by two acknowledged experts, takes a wide-ranging examination of Operation Market Garden from the strategic, operational and tactical level. The role of the Allied commanders involved is scrutinized with surprising results. For example, US General Brereton’s pivotal role has seldom been mentioned, yet he is revealed as responsible for choosing landing and drop zones. The record of airborne forces, both German and Allied, prior to September 1944 raises questions and the doubt that many senior commanders, including Eisenhower, had as to their effectiveness is highlighted. The parts played by VIII and XII Corps of Second Army and General Dempsey, its Commander are scrutinized, as are the actions of local commanders and troops on the ground. Both those with a deep interest in military history and the layman will find much to inform and satisfy them in this valuable and at times provocative account.


Sierra Hotel : flying Air Force fighters in the decade after Vietnam

Sierra Hotel : flying Air Force fighters in the decade after Vietnam

Author:

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1428990488

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In February 1999, only a few weeks before the U.S. Air Force spearheaded NATO's Allied Force air campaign against Serbia, Col. C.R. Anderegg, USAF (Ret.), visited the commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe. Colonel Anderegg had known Gen. John Jumper since they had served together as jet forward air controllers in Southeast Asia nearly thirty years earlier. From the vantage point of 1999, they looked back to the day in February 1970, when they first controlled a laser-guided bomb strike. In this book Anderegg takes us from "glimmers of hope" like that one through other major improvements in the Air Force that came between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. Always central in Anderegg's account of those changes are the people who made them. This is a very personal book by an officer who participated in the transformation he describes so vividly. Much of his story revolves around the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB), Nevada, where he served two tours as an instructor pilot specializing in guided munitions.


Dark Age

Dark Age

Author: Pierce Brown

Publisher: Del Rey

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 907

ISBN-13: 0425285952

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. “Brown’s plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year) He broke the chains. Then he broke the world…. A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy? In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned. Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies. Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER


The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance

The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance

Author: Gregory Pedlow

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-03-15

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1634508513

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The CIA’s 2013 release of its book The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance 1954–1974 is a fascinating and important historical document. It contains a significant amount of newly declassified material with respect to the U-2 and Oxcart programs, including names of pilots; codenames and cryptonyms; locations, funding, and cover arrangements; electronic countermeasures equipment; cooperation with foreign governments; and overflights of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other countries. Originally published with a Secret/No Foreign Dissemination classification, this detailed study describes not only the program’s technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context, including the difficult choices faced by President Eisenhower in authorizing overflights of the Soviet Union and the controversy surrounding the shoot down there of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960. The authors discuss the origins of the U-2, its top-secret testing, its specially designed high-altitude cameras and complex life-support systems, and even the possible use of poison capsules by its pilots, if captured. They call attention to the crucial importance of the U-2 in the gathering of strategic and tactical intelligence, as well as the controversies that the program unleashed. Finally, they discuss the CIA’s development of a successor to the U-2, the Oxcart, which became the world’s most technologically advanced aircraft. For the first time, the more complete 2013 release of this historical text is available in a professionally typeset format, supplemented with higher quality photographs that will bring alive these incredible aircraft and the story of their development and use by the CIA. This edition also includes a new preface by author Gregory W. Pedlow and a foreword by Chris Pocock. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.


A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force

A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force

Author: Stephen Lee McFarland

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Except in a few instances, since World War II no American soldier or sailor has been attacked by enemy air power. Conversely, no enemy soldier orsailor has acted in combat without being attacked or at least threatened by American air power. Aviators have brought the air weapon to bear against enemies while denying them the same prerogative. This is the legacy of the U.S. AirForce, purchased at great cost in both human and material resources.More often than not, aerial pioneers had to fight technological ignorance, bureaucratic opposition, public apathy, and disagreement over purpose.Every step in the evolution of air power led into new and untrodden territory, driven by humanitarian impulses; by the search for higher, faster, and farther flight; or by the conviction that the air way was the best way. Warriors have always coveted the high ground. If technology permitted them to reach it, men, women andan air force held and exploited it-from Thomas Selfridge, first among so many who gave that "last full measure of devotion"; to Women's Airforce Service Pilot Ann Baumgartner, who broke social barriers to become the first Americanwoman to pilot a jet; to Benjamin Davis, who broke racial barriers to become the first African American to command a flying group; to Chuck Yeager, a one-time non-commissioned flight officer who was the first to exceed the speed of sound; to John Levitow, who earned the Medal of Honor by throwing himself over a live flare to save his gunship crew; to John Warden, who began a revolution in air power thought and strategy that was put to spectacular use in the Gulf War.Industrialization has brought total war and air power has brought the means to overfly an enemy's defenses and attack its sources of power directly. Americans have perceived air power from the start as a more efficient means of waging war and as a symbol of the nation's commitment to technology to master challenges, minimize casualties, and defeat adversaries.


Happy Jack's Go Buggy

Happy Jack's Go Buggy

Author: Jack Ilfrey

Publisher: Schiffer Military Aviation His

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9780764306648

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This autobiography was originally written in 1946 by eight-victory WWII Fighter Ace, Jack Ilfrey. This new edition has been expanded with many new photographs (many never before published), a special color photo section, and three detailed aircraft profile paintings. The reader will fly through the skies with Ilfrey in his P-38 as he and his unit, the famed 94th Fighter Squadron, befome the first group of American aircraft to fly from the USA to England. Thrill to the stories of aerial combat over North Africa as Ilfrey becomes one of America's first WWII air aces. Marvel at the flying exploits of Ilfrey as a member of the 20th Fighter Group/8th Air Force and join him on his incredible evasion story through German occupied France. This book is undoubtedly one of the finest stories of aerial combat that has ever been written.


The Second World War Illustrated

The Second World War Illustrated

Author: Jack Holroyd

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2023-06-30

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1399063073

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Second World War Illustrated: 1944 follows the author's visual tour of the war by means of painstakingly researched and digitally restored pictures from the period of the key battlefields and events of the period from September 1943 to the late summer of 1944. This year marked a defining change in the balance of the war; by its end the Axis powers were in serious trouble on all their fronts. The book begins with a visual history of the Allied invasion of Italy at Salerno and the subsequent slow progress made in Italy, including the battle for Monte Cassino, the landings at Anzio and the liberation of Rome. The focus then shifts to the planning for the Normandy landings: we are reminded of the magnitude of the task facing the Allies, with an analysis of the formidable defenses of Hitler's Atlantic Wall and the beach defenses along the French coast. There are fascinating pictures of preparations by the Allies during Operation Tiger and detailed maps that explain the build-up and execution of the invasion beaches. There is detailed coverage of the D Day landings and the fierce fighting involved in the breakthrough of the German defenses in Normandy to the liberation of Paris, as well as the often neglected Allied landings in the south of France. The author provides a fascinating photographic history of Operation Valkyrie, the plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, including key players, the planning and the aftermath of the failed attempt on the Führer's life. There is a chapter on Hitler's new terror weapon – the V2 rocket, including the men and women who designed them and the Allied attempts to disrupt their development with the Peenemünde raid; a separate chapter looks at the growing air offensive against Germany. Although overshadowed by events in the west, there is chapter on the increasingly evident collapse of the German army on the Eastern Front, which included the loss of his Army Group Centre. Latter chapters turn our attention to the war in the east. The American advance continued in the South Pacific, involving bloody battles to take what appear to be insignificant islands and island groups, bringing the Allies ever closer to the Japanese mainland. The British and Indian armies continued to be threatened by the Japanese army’s push to India via Burma, which was finally halted at Kohima and Imphal. With over 1,000 original photographs, this is a true labor of love and an ideal purchase for anyone interested in the history of the Second World War in a more accessible form.