Archive for Items Categorized 'Military', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Airway to the East 1918–1920 and the Collapse of No.1 Aerial Route RAF

by Clive Semple

The Arab-Israeli conflict is in the news every day. This book revisits a story related to it but buried since 1919 and deals with early long-distance flying in general.

The White Rose of Stalingrad

by Bill Yenne

In WWII, only the Soviets had female active duty combat pilots. In fact, they had three all-female squads. Two of their pilots became aces. The long-suppressed and forgotten story of one of them is told here.

Battle of Britain The Movie: The Men and Machines of one of the Greatest War Films Ever Made

by Robert J. Rudhall & Dilip Sarkar

You may not have seen the original 1969 movie but outtakes from it found their way into more than a dozen movies between 1971 and 2010. This book explains why and how the movie was made, with special emphasis on the aircraft used.

Military Low-Flying in the UK: The Skill of Pilots and Photographers

by Michael Leek 

Look at the cover photo and consider that it was taken from the ground, not from a higher-flying plane! This book shows how it’s done.

Dornier Do 335 Pfeil/Arrow

by J. Richard Smith and Eddie J. Creek

Fast the Arrow was but it never flew in combat. It made its greatest contribution to aviation during post-WWII testing by the Allies, aided by the German experts who had originally built it. From origins to “what if” studies, this book has it.

The Handley Page Victor: The History & Development of a Classic Jet, Vol. 1

by Roger R. Brooks

This two-volume Data File covers the 86 Cold War-era Victors produced to carry their nuclear payload higher, faster, and further than any other plane.

SR-71 Blackbird: Lockheed’s Ultimate Spy Plane

by David Doyle

Do a literature search and you’d think the Blackbird must be hot stuff: every year more is being published about it but the thing retired long ago. Just about all those books play nicely with this one because it has something the others don’t.

The Bomber Mafia

by Malcom Gladwell

Planning to watch the movie Oppenheimer? A nuclear bomb!? Why had other military strategies not broken Japan’s ability to fight? Because no matter what the strategists of the Bomber Mafia thought, pinpoint hits from high altitude were not achievable in those days.

Bomber

by Len Deighton

This is a novel but the level of research and attention to detail Deighton brought to bear could have easily yielded a nonfiction analysis of one fateful day and night in 1943 pinning German air defenses and RAF Bomber Command against each other.

Ronny Bar Profiles: German Fighters of the Great War Vol 1

by Ronny Bar

If you deal with World War I aviation you will have seen Bar’s artwork before. He was a modeler before he became an artist so he knows what level of detail and realism to show. There are only six aircraft makers covered in this book but in dozens of variations.

Flying with the SPOOKS, Memoir of a Navy Linguist in the Vietnam War

by Herbert P. Shippey

“Join the Navy and see the world!” The U.S. Navy is probably not the first armed service that springs to mind when you think Vietnam—in fact, many people joined the Navy specifically to avoid going there. Navy SIGINT has not been covered extensively and much info was classified for 40 years.

The Greatest Escape

by Martin Barratt

RAF Bomber Command’s slogan was “the bomber will always get through.” But not necessarily back. Almost 45% of their aircrews died in WWII. Almost 10,000 were captured, and many kept their stories to themselves. This is one of them.