The Bomber Boys

Author : Travis L. Ayres
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101145366
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bomber Boys written by Travis L. Ayres and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True tales of heroism and the men who fought and died in the skies of World War II Europe. In World War II, there were all too many ways for a fighting man to die. But no theater of operations offered more fatal choices than the skies above Nazi-occupied Europe. Inside of a B-17 Bomber, thousands of feet above the earth, death was always a moment away. From the hellish storms of enemy flak and relentless strafing of Luftwaffe fighters, to mid-air collisions, mechanical failure, and simple bad luck, it’s a wonder any man would volunteer for such dangerous duty. But some very brave men did. Some paid the ultimate price. Some made it home. But in the end, all would achieve victory. Here, author Travis L. Ayres has gathered a collection of previously untold personal accounts of combat and camaraderie aboard the B-17 Bombers that flew countless sorties against the enemy, as related by the men who lived and fought in the air—and survived. They are stories of heroism, sacrifice, miraculous survival and merciless warfare. But they should all be remembered... INCLUDES PHOTOS

Author : Patrick Bishop
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
ISBN 13 : 0007280130
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bomber Boys: Fighting Back 1940–1945 written by Patrick Bishop and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2011-12-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrick Bishop looks at the lives and the extraordinary risks that the painfully young pilots of Bomber Command took during the air-offensive against Germany from 1940-1945. As featured on the BBC 1 documentary BOMBER BOYS, presented by Ewan McGregor.

Author : Kevin Wilson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1681773791
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blood and Fears: How America's Bomber Boys of the 8th Air Force Saved World War II written by Kevin Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heroic, dramatic, and sometimes tragic history of how the US 8th Air Force changed the course of World War II. The US 8th Air Force came of age in 1944. With a fresh commander, it was ready to demonstrate its true power: from Operation Argument in February—targeting German aircraft production plants—to bringing the Luftwaffe to battle over Berlin, the combined US Air Force-Royal Air Force forces’ round-the clock campaign bottled up the German army in Normandy. Day after day, the American bomber boys watched their comrades burn to death in blazing bombers, or observed their comrades being thrown out of exploding aircraft without parachutes and sink with their crippled aircraft in the freezing North Sea. But by the following spring they had destroyed the Nazi’s fighting spirit and saw Germany broken in two. In this authoritative history, Kevin Wilson reveals the blood and heroism of the 8th Air Force. At the same time, he opens up the lives of the Women's Army Corps and Red Cross girls who served in England with them and feared for the men in the skies, and he hasn't flinched from recounting the devastation of bombing or the testimony of shocked German civilians. Drawing on first-hand accounts from diaries, letters, and his personal audio recordings, the author has brought to life the ebullient Americans' interaction with their British counterparts, unveiling stories of humanity and heartbreak. Thanks to America's bomber boys and girls, the tide of World War II shifted forever.

Author : Marianne van Velzen
Publisher : Allen & Unwin
ISBN 13 : 1925576795
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bomber Boys written by Marianne van Velzen and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2017-04-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: March 1942. Java is about to fall. An Australian military dispatch rider and a Dutch air force transport pilot embark on a frightening escape from the advancing Japanese that takes them from Bandung to a crash landing just north of Darwin. Both would later join a unique band of flyers determined to strike back at the enemy. Bomber Boys is the extraordinary and little known story of more than 100 Dutch airmen, stranded in Australia with no country to return to, who were joined by a contingent of Australians to make up the RAAF's No. 18 (Netherlands East Indies) Squadron. Formed in Canberra in April 1942, the squadron flew operational coastal patrols before eventually being relocated to the secret MacDonald Airfield, north of Pine Creek in the Northern Territory, and eventually Batchelor, near Darwin. This is, however, more than a story about the 900 bombing raids, reconnaissance missions and attacks on Japanese shipping that the squadron flew in its three years of existence under Australian control. At its heart, is a powerful and compelling story of a group of very different men, thrown together for a common purpose, and the strange and sometimes difficult friendships they formed.

Author : Graham Pitchfork
Publisher : Grub Street Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1911667645
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Buccaneer Boys 2 written by Graham Pitchfork and published by Grub Street Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the critically acclaimed publication eight years ago of Buccaneer Boys, long-serving Buccaneer navigator Air Commodore Graham Pitchfork has now followed up the great success of the book with more true tales from those who flew the last all-British bomber. Thirty Buccaneer ‘Boys’, drawn from the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Air Force and the South African Air Force, outline their experiences in the maritime role, operations overland, including the first Gulf War, and operations by the South Africans in the Border Wars. In addition to the aircrew, air engineer officers and ground crew have also contributed. The reader is left in no doubt that the ‘Buccaneer Boys’ knew how to work hard and to play hard. The skill, professionalism and excitement of operating and servicing this iconic British aircraft shines throughout every page. This book is lavishly illustrated with 100 black and white photographs and two-color plate sections of 40 photographs, many never previously published.

Author : Carole Engle Avriett
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1621576558
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Coffin Corner Boys written by Carole Engle Avriett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gripping…filled with…dramatic escapes, moments of surprising humanity, and acts of bravery." —Publishers Weekly A Story of Adventure, Survival, Loyalty, and Brotherhood Taking off from England on March 16, 1944, young Lt. George Starks and the nine-man crew of his Flying Fortress were assigned to the “coffin corner,” the most exposed position in the bomber formation headed for Germany. They never got there. Shot down over Nazi-occupied France, the airmen bailed out one by one, scattered across the countryside. Miraculously, all ten survived, but as they discarded their parachutes in the farmland of Champagne, their wartime odyssey was only beginning. Alone, with a broken foot and a 20mm shell fragment in his thigh, twenty-year-old Starks set out on an incredible 300-mile trek to Switzerland, making his way with the help of ordinary men and women who often put themselves in great danger on his behalf. Six weeks later, on the verge of giving up, Starks found himself in the hands of a heroic member of the French Resistance—he calls him “the bravest man I’ve ever known”—who got him safely across the heavily guarded border. Similar ordeals awaited the other nine crewmen, who faced injury, betrayal, cap-tivity, hunger, and depression. It was nothing short of miraculous that all ten came home at the end of the war. George Starks emerged from his ordeal with two passions—to stay in touch with his crew whatever the obstacles and to return to France to find and thank the brave souls to whom he owed his life. His enduring loyalty enabled him to do both.

Author : Thomas Bloor
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781405622929
Total Pages : 67 pages
Book Rating : 4.2X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bomber Boys written by Thomas Bloor and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johnny says he's a lucky charm for any crew he flies with, but Len's not so sure, and on a mission to Berlin, he finds out thetruth.

Author : Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316296937
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bomber Mafia written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “truly compelling” (Good Morning America) New York Times bestseller that explores how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war—from the creator and host of the podcast Revisionist History. In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.

Author : Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141998385
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bomber Mafia written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A parable written for the age of technological disruption . . . brilliantly told' Sunday Times The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century 'The Bomber Mafia is a case study in how dreams go awry. When some shiny new idea drops from the heavens, it does not land softly in our laps. It lands hard, on the ground, and shatters.' In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past? This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test. The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War. In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And what is the price of progress?

Author : Mona D. Sizer
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 1475967098
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bomber Boys written by Mona D. Sizer and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of World War I, the English were more fascinated than frightened by the gigantic, silently floating Zeppelins. Using their flashlights they sought them through the fog unthinking that they were guiding them to drop bombs over London. At Pearl Harbor the Japanese samurai damaged or destroyed all the ships on Battleship Row almost destroying the harbor's usefulness for the duration of the war. Over Ploesti, Rumania, the American Fifteenth Air Force never did succeed in destroying Hitler's primary source of oil for his tanks. Colonel Paul Tibbets pulled the Enola Gay back on her tail and aimed her skyward to take off from the carrier Hornet to bomb Tokyo. THE BOMBER BOYS is the story of all those raids and more. Author Mona Sizer is noted for her exciting scenes and careful research.