From April to November 1918, the American Air Service grew from a poorly equipped, unorganized branch of the US Expeditionary Forces to a fighting unit equal to its opponent in every way. This text details the actual battle experiences of the men and boys who made up the service squadrons.
In December, 1941 US Army pilots began hauling passengers and cargo around the Philippines after the Japanese attack on Clark Field, thus beginning one of the most important air force missions of World War II. As America greared up to fight the war, dozens of what came to be known as troop carrier squadrons were activated and equipped, usually with Douglas C-47 and C-53 version of the DC-8 transport. Beginning in New Guinea, US Army troop carrier crews became a crucial part of the effort to turn the tide of war. In Europe troop carrier squadrons supported Army airborne forces and provided logistical support for air force squadrons. During the Battle of the Bulge troop carrier crews kept the 101st Airborne Division supplied. After the war, troop carrier squadrons supplied the besieged city of Berlin. Troop carrier crews supported UN forces in Korea, then supported French efforts in Indochina where their successors would become crucial to US efforts in the 1960s and early 1970s. This is their story.
James "Jim" Davis piloted a B-24, as part of the 8th Air Force, on nearly thirty missions in the European Theatre during World War II. He flew support missions for Operations Cobra and Market Garden and numerous bombing missions over occupied Europe in the summer and fall of 1944, attacking enemy airfields, airplane factories, railroad marshalling yards, ship yards, oil refineries, and chemical plants. While he and his crew survived without serious injuries, they witnessed the destruction of many of their friends' planes and experienced serious damage to their own plane on several occasions.
Capt. Field E. Kindley, with the famous Eddie Rickenbacker, was one of America's foremost World War I flying aces. Like Rickenbacker's, Kindley's story is one of fierce dogfights, daring aerial feats, and numerous brushes with death. Yet unlike Rickenbacker's, Kindley's story has not been fully told until now. Field Kindley gained experience with the RAF before providing leadership for the U.S. Air Service. Kindley was the fourth-ranking American air ace; his exploits earned him a Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster from the United States and a Distinguished Flying Cross from the British government. In February 1920, during a practice drill Kindley led, some enlisted men unwittingly entered the bombing target area. "Buzzing" the troops to warn them off the field, Kindley somehow lost control of his plane and died in the ensuing crash. Using arduously gathered primary materials and accounts of Great War aces, Jack Ballard tells the story of this little-known hero from the glory days of aerial warfare. Through this tale, an era and a daring flyer live again.
This is the remarkable story of the American First World War serviceman Arthur Clifford Kimber. When his country entered the Great War in 1917, Kimber left Stanford University to carry the first official American flag to the Western Front. Fired by idealism for the French cause, the young student initially acted as a volunteer ambulance driver, before training as a pilot and taking part in dogfights against ‘the Boche’. His letters home give a vivid picture of what Kimber witnessed on his journey from Palo Alto, California to the front in France: keen-eyed descriptions of New York as it prepared for the forthcoming conflict, the privations of wartime Britain and France, and encounters with former president Theodore Roosevelt and Hollywood actress Lillian Gish. Kimber details his exhilaration, his everyday concerns and his horror as he adapts to an active wartime role. Arthur Clifford Kimber was one of the first Americans on the front line after the entry of the US into the war and, tragically, also one of the last to be buried there – killed in action just a few weeks before the end of the war. Here, his frank letters to his mother and brothers, compiled, edited and put in context by Patrick Gregory and Elizabeth Nurser, are published for the first time.
Britain's most northerly bomber base - Middleton St George in County Durham - played a key role in the RAF's strategic night bomber offensive against Germany - from the day its resident Whitley bomber squadron flew its first offensive operational sorties in April 1941 up until the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Over four hard years of total war, its squadrons of Whitleys, Halifaxes and Lancasters flew in all the main RAF offensives against the Third Reich. These included the Thousand Bomber Raids, the Battles of the Ruhr, Hamburg and Berlin, and finally the huge daylight raids that pulverised the failing heart of Nazi Germany in the closing months of the war in Europe.
"This book explains who the four US military services truly are and why they make and execute policy as they do. The book focuses on American civil-military relationships, explaining why the services imperfectly satisfy their civilian bosses and why the four services think and act so differently from one another. Ultimately, the book offers three independent but mutually reinforcing contributions to the fields of security studies and American civil-military relations. First, it builds on one of the major theoretical approaches to civil-military relations--agency theory--and identifies key conditions under which agency theory best explains military service behavior. Author Jeffrey W. Donnithorne provides a "principled agent" model that finds four unique condition sets that explain civil-military dynamics with new clarity. Second, the book exposes the importance of service culture in civil-military relations and offers a rich yet concise portrait of each of the four US military services: the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.Third, the book offers two important case studies of civil-military policymaking. These two cases demonstrate the principled agent framework in action, while amply revealing the four services as distinctly different political actors. Finally, the book offers both conclusions and implications for today's security environment, suggesting likely pathways where the services will diverge in their approach to current defense issues. With theoretical novelty, empirical depth, and engaging military history, the book aims to reach academics, practitioners, and general readers alike"--