Ira Taffy Jones was a well-known air fighter during the First World War, having scored about 40 victories flying SE5 scouts in France with 74 Squadron. Well known in flying circles, Jones recorded stories drawn from his own experiences during the war and wrote of the many personalities he had met or known by association, both during the war and in the post-war flying years. An Air Fighters Scrap Book recreates the atmosphere of the days of the biplane, of wartime flying, of early peacetime adventures in the air, the development of civil aviation, and breathtaking record beating flights, all evoking the sheer delight in flying that characterized those early years.
The F-117 Nighthawk was the world's first operational aircraft designed and built to utilize stealth technology. It was developed specifically to attack high-value targets and escape without being detected by hostile radar systems. The F-117 first saw action during Operation Just Cause in Panama in December 1989, it owned the skies over Iraq during Desert Storm in early 1991, and it supplemented NATO's Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia and Kosovo. This photography-driven history follows the design, construction, and flight-testing of BLUE-01 and BLUE-02, Lockheed's original demonstrator aircraft. The focus then shifts to the Scorpion Flight Test Team and the development of the F-117 from its first flight through its Initial Operational Capability approval. Only recently has the veil of secrecy surrounding the F-117 and its history been lifted, allowing the general public to learn about this groundbreaking aircraft and its amazing development team. F-117 Stealth Fighter Photo Scrapbook contains never-before-seen photography covering the design, construction, and development of the F-117 and its service history in Operation Desert Storm.
This gripping biography of Air Commodore Keith &‘ Grid' Caldwell CBE, MC, DFC & bar, Croix de guerre, tells the story of his remarkable exploits during the First World War. Flying single-seat fighters against the best of the German air force, including the Red Baron' s Flying Circus and airmen such as Werner Voss, Caldwell accumulated 26 victories in aerial combat.Over his illustrious career he flew with numerous &‘ stars' of the British air service, including Albert Ball, William &‘ Billy' Bishop and Edward &‘ Mick' Mannock. In the last year of the war, aged only 22, he was given command of the new 74 Squadron. Under his leadership 74 &‘ Tiger' Sqaudron become one of the war' s most feared and revered units.Written by a leading military historian, Grid details Caldwell' s journey from early flight training in Auckland to his death-defying sorties over enemy lines on the Western Front. It also details his pivotal role in sustaining military aviation in interwar New Zealand, and his role in reinvigorating interest in the airmen of the First World War during the 1960s and 1970s.
Thoughtfully designed and beautiful produced, these four handsome volumes give the scrapbooker the opportunity to preserve and present the professional successes of the members--and former members--of the United States of Armed Forces. They provide a special place to keep and display photographs, mementos, letters, and stories as a personal testament to one's accomplishments. Each scrapbook contains: - A removable section offering scrapbook-making ideas and techniques, sample projects, and instructions on using the album- 20 decorative pages printed with military-inspired borders and patriotic motifs, protected in clear acetate sleeves- 16 top-loading poly sleeves
Through rare photographs and previously unpublished government documents, this scrapbook recreates a story that shook the aviation world and forever changed a nation. In the chill of the Cold War, the RCAF and aircraft giant A. V. Roe developed and built a new generation of jet fighter, one that could intercept Soviet bombers flying over the North Pole, a fighter that would stand as the first line of defense for North America. This important collection is vital to understanding the plan, the dream, the technological victories, and how it all went wrong. A must for aviation enthusiasts!
Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot is the authoritative life story of Britain and Ireland's most successful fighter pilot of the First World War; a working class hero and staunch socialist who in the skies above the Western Front combined engineering prowess, tactical initiative, and grim determination to become an inspirational squadron commander.
Starting in 1909 with the beginnings of military aviation and the aviation industry and ending with their catastrophic postwar contraction, the book examines the totality of the air war: its heroism, romantic myths, politics, strategies, and cost in men and materiel. John H. Morrow, Jr., also elaborates on the advancements in aircraft and engine technology and production during airpower's development into a viable and threatening military weapon within a decade of its origins.
An account of the little-known involvement of Royal Marines as they engaged the new Bolsheviks immediately after the Russian Revolution. After three years of great loss and suffering on the Eastern Front, Imperial Russia was in crisis and on the verge of revolution. In November 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks (later known as “Soviets”) seized power, signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and brutally murdered Tsar Nicholas (British King George’s first cousin) and his children so there could be no return to the old order. As Russia fractured into loyalist “White” and revolutionary “Red” factions, the British government became increasingly drawn into the escalating Russian Civil War after hundreds of thousands of German troops transferred from the Eastern Front to France were used in the 1918 “Spring Offensive” which threatened Paris. What began with the landing of a small number of Royal Marines at Murmansk in March 1918 to protect Allied-donated war stores quickly escalated with the British government actively pursuing an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks on several fronts in support of British trained and equipped “White Russian” Allies. At the height of British military intervention in mid-1919, British troops were fighting the Soviets far into the Russian interior in the Baltic, North Russia, Siberia, Caspian and Crimea simultaneously. The full range of weapons in the British arsenal were deployed including the most modern aircraft, tanks and even poison gas. British forces were also drawn into peripheral conflicts against “White” Finnish troops in North Russia and the German “Iron Division” in the Baltic. It remains a little-known fact that the last British troops killed by the German Army in the First World War were killed in the Baltic in late 1919, nor that the last Canadian and Australian soldiers to die in the First World War suffered their fate in North Russia in 1919 many months after the Armistice. Despite the award of five Victoria Crosses (including one posthumous) and the loss of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen, most of whom remain buried in Russia, the campaign remains virtually unknown in Britain today. After withdrawal of all British forces in mid-1920, the British government attempted to cover up its military involvement in Russia by classifying all official documents. By the time files relating to the campaign were quietly released decades later there was little public interest. Few people in Britain today know that their nation ever fought a war against the Soviet Union. The culmination of more than 15 years of painstaking and exhaustive research with access to many previously classified official documents, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and personal accounts, author Damien Wright has written the first comprehensive campaign history of British and Commonwealth military intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-20. “Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War remains forgotten. Wright’s book addresses that oversight, interspersing the broader story with personal accounts of participants.” —Military History Magazine
