Showing results for "Who's" in Armed Forces

A close-up, action-filled account of the crucial role the U.S. Navy played in the early years of the Cold War, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Fleet at Flood Tide and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors “A lucid, fast-moving and fitting finale to [Hornfischer’s] career...

In Who Dares Wins, Big Phil Campion reveals his chequered past, from terrible abuse suffered in a string of kids' homes to psychological abuse suffered at a top public school. Phil guides you through his soldiering career, from the so called 'green army' to the brutal trial of SAS selection and all that followed. This includes years spent providing private military services across war-torn and risk-laden Africa; in between he was body-guarded the likes of Led Zep, Oasis, Kasabian, Dizzy Rascal and Pro Green.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE ACTION-PACKED STORY OF THE WWII GROUP THAT BECAME OUR SAS, FROM ONE OF THE UK'S MOST STORIED SPECIAL FORCES OPERATORS War came to North Africa in June 1940. But it would be another year and half before a newly-formed SAS went into action for the first time. Until...

Bloomsbury presents The Ones Who Got Away by Bill Yenne, read by Christopher Ragland. A remarkable collection of accounts of intrepid American aircrew shot down over enemy lines during World War II and how they got away. To be an airman in the Eighth Air Force flying over the war-torn skies of...

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.

Jasper Maskelyne was a world famous magician and illusionist in the 1930s. When war broke out, he volunteered his services to the British Army and was sent to Egypt when the desert war began. Here, he used his unique skills to save the vital port of Alexandria from German bombers and to 'hide' the Suez Canal from them. He invented all sorts of camouflage methods to make trucks look like tanks and vice versa. On Malta he developed 'the world's first portable holes': fake bomb craters used to fool the Germans into thinking they had hit their targets.

At the beginning of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret country headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation preparing to broadcast British propaganda into occupied territory. These men and women would become the Political Warfare Executive.

Despite the many films and television programmes over the decades since the end of the Second World War that portrays our allied heroes as grown-up men and women, the Battle of Britain was in the main actually fought and won by teenagers. The average age of an RAF fighter pilot was just 20 years old. Many of the men and women who designed and built their planes were even younger.

An extraordinary story of American can-do, an inside look at the building of the most dangerous aircraft carrier in the world, the John F. Kennedy. Tip the Empire State Building onto its side and you’ll have a sense of the length of the United States Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the most...

Until the end of the Cold War in 1990, the RAF had several major bases worldwide—largely in those areas where the service had been based during the inter-war years. In Cold War Boys Overseas, contributors recall their time at these foreign destinations. With almost half of RAF personnel serving abroad in the 1960s situated throughout Germany, the book starts its focus there with tales of monitoring the Soviet threat.

From the author of national bestsellers The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter comes "a rousing tale of little-known heroes" (Booklist). The Few tells the dramatic and unforgettable story of eight young Americans who joined Britain's Royal Air Force, defying their country's neutrality laws and...

Graham Pitchfork has built on these reminiscences to trace the roles of Beaufighter squadrons spread across all the theaters of World War Two operations. From home bases, through north-west Europe, North Africa, Malta, and the Mediterranean to the far Far East and south-west Pacific, the Beaufighter served far and wide as did the crews of the RAF, RAAF, SAAF, and New Zealand and Canadian squadrons. All are covered in this quite unique book to be savored by all those interested in the war in the air from 1939-1945. 

June 1942. The Third Reich is victorious everywhere. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who escaped to Britain just before the War. Many have lost their families, their homes - their whole worlds. And now, in the crucial final battles against the Nazis, they will stop at nothing to defeat them. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop.

Since the test pilot Harold Harris became the first man to save his life with a parachute in 1922 there have been over 120,000 air force pilots and crew who owe their lives to their parachutes. Into the Silk is full of astounding tales of people who against the odds bailed out of their planes and were therefore able to enter the annals of the Caterpillar Club, a society open only to men and women who survive aviation disaster with the aid of a parachute.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US Navy had a total of 111 submarines. It was mostly a collection of aging boats. Fortunately, with the war in Europe was already two years old and friction with Japan ever increasing, help from what would become known as the Silent Service in the Pacific was on the way: there were 73 of the new fleet submarines under construction. The Silent Service in World War II tells the story of America's intrepid underwater warriors in the words of the men who lived the war in the Pacific against Japan.

November 1943 to May 1945. The US Army Air Forces waged an unprecedentedly dogged and violent campaign against Hitler's vital oil production and industrial plants on theThird Reich's southern flank. Flying from southern Italy, far from the limelight enjoyed by the Eighth Air Force in England, the Fifteenth Air Force engaged in high-risk missions spanning most of the European continent. The story of the Fifteenth Air Force deserves a prideful place in the annals of American gallantry.

The history of the Spitfire contains many hitherto hidden or little-known stories of the men and women behind the plane - not only the gifted creators and inventors who brought the Spitfire to life or the brave fighter pilots from many countries who triumphed in battle but also the thousands of other people whose lives were affected by their personal connection to it - engineers, ground crew, factory or office workers, and their families. Spitfire Stories recounts the memories and stories of these people, from the birth of the iconic Spitfire in the 1930s to the present day.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Hurricane Girls by Jo Wheeler, read by Claire Rushbrook. While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the...

Before America joined World War I, a small group of Americans volunteered for the French Foreign Legion to help defeat the Central Powers. Historian David Hanna profiles seven of these volunteers: a poet, an artist, a boxer, a stunt pilot, a college student, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and an advertising executive. All seven men were united in courage; and some, like poet Alan Seeger, paid the ultimate sacrifice.

In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else.