When a proud Adolf Hitler revealed his new Luftwaffe to the world in March 1935, it was the largest, most modern military air arm the world had seen. Equipped with the latest monoplane fighter and bomber aircraft manned by well-trained and motivated crews, it soon became evident that the Luftwaffe also possessed a high degree of technical superiority over Germany's future enemies. Yet within just nine years the once-mightiest air force in the world had reached total collapse, destroyed in part...
Martín Espada is a poet who "stirs in us an undeniable social consciousness," says Richard Blanco. Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry. Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande,...
Written some forty years ago for his own enjoyment, and twenty years before his death in 1986, this biography was given to Simon Muggleton, a collector of aviation memorabilia, and he and aviation historian and author Norman Franks recognised immediately that it was an important contribution to Britain's and the RAF's early history. Without altering any of D'Arcy Greig's original writing, Norman has merely made it more concise and manageable, adding annotations of useful information, particularl...
Amy Johnsons solo flight to Australia smashed many previous aviation records of the 1920s. This work, written by Constance Babington Smith, tells the story of the typist who took to the skies.
One of Churchill's Own: The Memoirs of Battle of Britain Ace John Greenwood
by David Greenwood
John Greenwood was born in East London on 3 April 1921. At the age of eighteen, in February 1939, he forged his father's signature and joined the RAF on a short service commission. Seven months later, Britain declared war on Germany and 253 Squadron was formed. In May 1940, John and his fellow pilots were sent to France with 24 hours' notice where he shot down a Dornier 17 and a Messerschmitt 109 the next day, before returning to England with only four pilots and three aircraft left. 253 Squad...
These war memoirs of Jim Hunter are in two parts. First there is the account of his flying career in RAF Coastal Command, culminating in an extraordinarily brave attack by him and his Beaufighter on the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst. Shot down, he became a POW and the second half tells of his experiences in Stalag Luft 3\. A skilled artist he became a camp forger, providing documents for escapees such as Oliver Philpott, one of the Wooden Horse escapers. Jim's own escape tunnel was detected...
Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader remains one of the most famous RAF fighter pilots to date, perhaps even the most famous of all, thanks to Paul Brickhill's best-selling 1950s yarn _Reach for the Sky_ and Dany Angel's box office hit of the same name, starring Kenneth Moore. Bader, a graduate of the RAF College Cranwell and a professional, career officer, was a gifted sportsman and aerobatic pilot -but headstrong. After a crash that led to the amputation of both of his legs, the Second World War w...
‘One of the finest memoirs published in recent years.’ Dan Jones ‘An utterly fascinating and wonderfully detailed insight into the hidden world of the modern submarine.’ James Holland A candid, visceral, and incredibly entertaining account of what it’s like to live in one of the most extreme environments in the world. Imagine a world without natural light, where you can barely stand up straight for fear of knocking your head, where you have n...
Kidnapped and held for ransom for 18 days by Nigerian pirates, Captain Wren Thomas suffered horrors, bringing to life the reality of modern-day pirating. Faith carried him during and after captivity, a beloved PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) service dog named Beaux, eventually saving his life once again. In this first-person survivor account, Captain Thomas brings readers into the ocean, onto his ship as he and his team fight off the pirates, and ultimately within the captivity camp. Devas...
First Jet Pilot, The: the Story of German Test Pilot Erich Warsitz
by Lutz Warsitz
On 27 August 1939, Flugkapitan Erich Warsitz became the first man to fly a jet aircraft, the Heinkel He 178 and in June of the same year he flew the first liquid-fuel rocket aircraft, the Heinkel He 176. His legendary flying skills enabled him to assist the pioneering German aircraft and engine design teams that included Wernher von Braun and Ernst Heinkel. He repeatedly risked his life extending the frontiers of aviation in speed, altitude and technology and survived many life-threatening incid...
Douglas Bader: a Biography of the Legendary World War Ii Fighter Pilot
by John Frayn Turner
Douglas Bader was a legend in his lifetime and remains one today 100 years after his birth. A charismatic leader and fearless pilot he refused to let his severe disability (loss of both legs in a flying accident) ground him. He fought the authorities as ruthless as he did the enemy and not only managed to return to the front line but became a top scoring ace. His innovative tactics (The Big Wing) ensured his promotion and he led a key group of squadrons during the dark days of the Battle of B...
On the morning of December 22, 1964, at a small, closely guarded airstrip in the desert town of Palmdale, California, Lockheed test pilot Bob Gilliland stepped into a strange-looking aircraft and roared into aviation history. Developed at the super-secret Skunk Works, the SR-71 Blackbird was a technological marvel. In fact, more than a half century later, the Mach 3–plus titanium wonder, designed by Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, remains the world’s fastest jet. It took a test pilot with the r...
Life Between the Levees is a chronicle of first-person reflections and folklore from pilots who have dedicated their lives to the river. The stories are as diverse as the storytellers themselves, and the volume is full of drama, suspense, and a way of life a "landlubber" could never imagine. Although waterways and ports in the Mississippi corridor move billions of dollars of products throughout the US and foreign markets, in today's world those who live and work on land have little knowledge of...
Death and Deprivation on the Forgotten Sumatra Railway
by James H Banton
James Henry Banton was born in Burton on Trent in 1920\. He worked as a driver of a steam locomotive used to used to transport beer and supplies to breweries around the town. When war broke out Jim joined the RAF, eventually becoming a Leading Aircraftsman as part of the RAF's ground crew. During this time Jim had met the love of his life Dorothy Mason. Jim didn't know that when he left Gladstone Dock in Liverpool he would not see home or his family including Dorothy for another four and a half...
The heroic story of the founding of the US Navy during the American Revolution has been told before, yet missing from most maritime histories of the country’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels, from 20-foot whaleboats to 40-cannon men-of-war, that truly revealed the new nation’s character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission and contends that privateers, though often seen as pr...
In August 1943, a highly classified US Army Air Force unit, code-named the “Wright Project,” departed Langley Field for Guadalcanal in the South Pacific to join the fight against the Empire of Japan. Operating independently, under sealed orders drafted at the highest levels of Army Air Force, the Wright Project was unique, both in terms of the war-fighting capabilities provided by classified systems the ten B-24 Liberators of this small group of airmen brought to the war, and in the success thes...