Showing results for "The Media" in Military & War

For eighty-two years the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), which in 1918 became the Royal Air Force (RAF), maintained a permanent military aviation presence in the Far East. The first RFC units arrived in India in 1915. RAF India grew substantially in the interwar period and throughout World War Two. Various changes in the command structure finally saw the creation of the Far East Air Force (FEAF) in June 1949, covering South East Asia and Hong Kong.

Kandahar. The ancient desert crossroads and, as of fall of 2001, ground zero for the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in southern Afghanistan. In the northern part of the country, the US-supported Northern Alliance has made progress on the battlefield, but in the south, the country is still under the Taliban's bloody hold and al-Qa'ida continues to operate there. With no "Southern Alliance" for the US to support, a new strategy is needed if victory is to be achieved. Veteran CIA officer Duane Evans is dispatched to Pakistan to "get something going in the South." Foxtrot in Kandahar is his story.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Pierre Clostermann DFC was one of the oustanding Allied aces of the Second World War. A Frenchman who flew with the RAF, he survived over 420 operational sorties, shooting down scores of enemy aircraft while friends and comrades lost their lives in the deadly skies above Europe. The Big Show, his extraordinary account of the war, has been described as the greatest pilot's memoir of WWII.

This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Born into an illustrious Indian family in 1914 and brought up in the non-violent Sufi religion, Noor seemed an unlikely secret agent. Yet she became the first female radio operator to be landed in enemy-occupied France, and refused to abandon her post in Paris in 1943, continuing her work under extremely dangerous circumstances.

The temperature was 40 degrees below zero when fighter planes screamed out of the clouds, puncturing the fuselage with a spray of machinegun fire and sending the bomber beside them into a death spin. This was followed by intense flak, as a hundred cannons on the ground tried to blow them out of the sky.

Turned away from the Royal Canadian Air Force for his apparent youth and frailty, Farley Mowat joined the infantry in 1940. The young second lieutenant soon earned the trust of the soldiers under his command, and was known to bend army rules to secure a stout drink, or find warm—if non-regulation—clothing. But when Mowat and his regiment engaged with elite German forces in the mountains of Sicily, the optimism of their early days as soldiers was replaced by despair.

Courage Under Fire is the first book published about Operation Lamar Plain. After fifty years, the story of the renowned 101st Airborne's major offensive near Tam Ky, South Vietnam, remains largely unknown. Fighting at Tam Ky by the 1st Brigade began 15 May 1969 while the 101st's 3rd Brigade battled on Hamburger Hill. The political consequences of Hamburger Hill's high casualties caused Lamar Plain and its high casualties to remain classified and undisclosed. Decades later, the fighting at Tam Ky is mostly forgotten except by those who fought there.

Like many young idealists, Eric Greitens wanted to make a difference. During college and afterward, he traveled to the world's trouble spots, working in refugee camps, serving the sick and the poor on four continents, from Gaza to Croatia to Mother Teresa's home in Calcutta, among others. Yet he could not prevent violence or save anyone from becoming a refugee; he could only step in afterward and try to ease the damage. So Eric joined the Navy SEALs and became an elite warrior....

Six days in hell define every SEAL that moves past the point of no return in their minds. Robert Adams, MD, brings the experiences of his classmates into view with real, difficult to believe experiences, described in frightening detail by the men that lived through the frigid cold, filthy muddy days, and body-destroying events of a winter Hell Week. Eleven of 70 men went on to graduate and serve over 40 years in almost every SEAL or UDT team with honor. Listen to their real-time story, and learn why these 11 men succeeded when so many others failed.

On the morning of 16 December 1944, a monumental German force of six hundred thousand men crashed into the Allied lines in the snowbound hills of the Belgian Ardennes. Why were Allied forces so surprised by this counterattack? And why have the German sabotage and deception operations that disrupted supply lines and outwitted Allied intelligence been so overlooked by historians?

The Lockheed SR-71, unofficially known as the Blackbird, was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed Skunk Works. The aircraft flew so fast and high that not one was ever shot down, even by a missile. SR-71 pilot and instructor Colonel Richard Graham offers a rare cockpit perspective on how regular Air Force pilots and navigators transformed themselves into SR-71 Blackbird crews, turning their unique aviation talents to account in an unprecedented way.

On 21 June 1941, assigned to Luftwaffe bomber wing Kampfgeschwader 53, the twenty-three-year-old Arnold Döring took off to fly his first mission against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. From that day, he kept a diary describing his operations in vivid detail. These diaries, here translated into English for the first time, give a unique perspective on the action on the Eastern Front, from the point of view of a bomber pilot.

A Japanese American boy born just before Pearl Harbor joins the Army and is thrust into the maelstrom of Vietnam. Drawn to intelligence work, his watchword is "Intoku," Japanese for "good done in secret." Ishimoto is recruited by the legendary Colonel Charlie Beckwith to be a founder of Delta Force, the legendary elite Special Operations unit. He is on the ground in Iran for the Desert One disaster during Operation Eagle Claw, the ill-fated bid to rescue American hostages in Tehran.

The most highly decorated German regimental commander of World War II, Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz first won the Iron Cross in the Great War. He was serving with the 1st Panzer Division when the Polish campaign inaugurated World War II. Strachwitz's exploits as commander of a panzer battalion during the French campaign earned him further decorations before he transferred to the newly formed 16th Panzer Division. There, he participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and then Operation Barbarossa, where he earned the Knight's Cross.

One of the few RAF aircrew to play a central part in two of the Second World War's most momentous events, the Battle of Britain and D-Day, Cyril 'Frank' Babbage was a survivor. He wasn't just an immensely skilled pilot; he was also blessed with extraordinary good fortune.

Days before he was drafted in 1962, Dennis Foley volunteered to join the army in the hopes of someday getting into West Point. He was only eighteen years old. At basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, a presentation by two impressive, self-confident special forces sergeants made an indelible impression on him. His career would come full circle. In 1972, wearing a green beret, Foley would be given command of his own A-Team.

Anyone who has a personal connection with someone who served as an infantryman in Vietnam or simply has curiosity about infantry life in Vietnam will better understand, after listening to this book, the answer to the question "What was daily life like for them there?"

The Arghandab River Valley is known for its lush vegetation from its grape furrows and its pomegranate orchards. It's also known as the birthplace of several Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar and Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, and was a major crossing route for weapons coming from Pakistan into Kandahar. This hostile environment had already claimed the lives of many seasoned infantrymen.

In 1945 seven of Hitler's henchmen were incarcerated as solitary inmates of the vast Spandau prison in Berlin originally built to accommodate hundreds. Every conceivable precaution was taken to ensure escape was impossible for such high-profile prisoners. Hitler's henchmen had been tried and convicted for their complicity in Hitler's campaign and had escaped the death penalty, unlike many of their former comrades.