Air Forces

Although the United States declared war against Germany in December 1941, a successful assault on Nazi-occupied Europe could not happen until Germany’s industrial and military might were crippled....

From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies....

This is the lively account of the hair-raising experiences of the men who have probed by sea and air into the inner mysteries of the world’s most terrible storms.

The former head of the Pentagon program responsible for the investigation of UFOs—now known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)—reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe.

Europe has fallen. Pearl Harbor is in flames. Enter: the Eighth....

The heart-pounding true story of the daring American women who piloted the most dangerous aircraft of World War II through the treacherous skies of Britain.

Four days before Christmas in 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany....

Antony Beevor has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student called "The Last German Victory." Yet The Battle of Arnhem, written with Beevor's inimitable style, is about much more than a single dramatic battle - it looks into the very heart of war....

You’ve heard him as host of the Fighter Pilot Podcast. More than 100k listeners have been waiting for this book. Now ride along. From the cockpit of a Navy jet circling overhead, an aircraft carrier—1,000 feet long and displacing 98,000 tons—looks no bigger than a child’s toy.

Masters of the Air is the riveting history of the American Eighth Air Force in World War II, the story of the young men who flew the bombers that helped bring Nazi Germany to its knees, brilliantly told by historian and World War II expert Donald Miller....

At the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small American community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front.

The inside story of the most expensive and controversial military program in history, as told by those who lived it....

They began operations out of England in the spring of '43. They flew their Flying Fortresses almost daily against strategic targets in Europe in the name of freedom....

Clean Sweep is a vivid narrative history, packed with first-hand accounts, of the US Eighth Air Force's VIII Fighter Command from its foundation in 1942 through to its victory in the skies over Nazi Germany....

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway....

In 1942, America's deadliest fighter pilot, or "ace of aces" - the legendary Eddie Rickenbacker - offered a bottle of bourbon to the first US fighter pilot to break his record of 26 enemy planes shot down....

You do not have to be an aviation aficionado to enjoy Colonel Steve Ladd’s fascinating personal tale, woven around his 28-year career as a fighter pilot....

The extraordinary story of the World War II air, land, and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpower....

NYT bestselling author Caroline Alexander provides a breathtaking account of combat and survival in one of the most brutally challenging and rarely examined campaigns of World War II....

At the height of WWII, LOOK Magazine profiled an 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”....

Thunderbolt is the incredible true life story of Robert S. Johnson, one of America’s leading fighter pilot aces in World War II....

The dramatic account of one of America's most celebrated - and controversial - military campaigns: the Doolittle Raid....

In The Cactus Air Force, Pacific War expert Thomas McKelvey Cleaver worked closely with Eric to build on his collection of diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts to create a vivid narrative of the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal....

The 'Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club' was the tongue-in-cheek nickname of the US Seventh Fleet that was stationed off the coast of Vietnam and this book tells the full story of the US Naval air campaign in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1975....

Here, in his own words, is the true story of America's wildest flying hero, of his extraordinary heroism, and of his greatest battle of all-the fight to survive....

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses—all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone—even Americans, even women—transport warplanes. Thus, twenty-five daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft.

Fight for the Final Frontier uses the concepts associated with irregular warfare to offer new insights for understanding the nature of strategic competition in space. Today's most pressing security concerns are best considered using an irregular warfare lens because incidents and points of potential conflict fall outside the definition of armed conflict. While some universal rules of combat apply across all domains, conflict in space up-ends those assumed standards of understanding.

The P-38 Lightning was one of the fastest operational fighters of World War II, famous for its successes in North Africa and the Pacific. In The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel shares the stories of the young men who climbed into the cockpits of the P-38 to fight for freedom, and of those who created, tested, and deployed these fearsome machines. The P-38 was the product of the Lockheed Corporation, the first fighter they ever built, principally conceptualized by Kelly Johnson, whose design was to meet Air Corps specifications. But it was no easy plane to fly.

The last battle of World War II was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty—the hunt for Nazi technologies.

John Humphreys was just a boy soldier in the Royal Engineers when war was declared in 1939. By the war's end he had jumped into Arnhem with the Parachute Regiment to spearhead the attack on the bridge. For days Humphreys and the rest of his squad held on, outnumbered and outgunned by the German army fighting to the last bullet and refusing to surrender. But the Bridge Too Far is only the climax of Humphreys’ remarkable war. Twice captured as a prisoner of war, he twice escaped from the enemy to make his way back to Allied lines in order to rejoin the fight.