Books about Bombers from Amazon.com

The masterfully told story of the unlikely men who came together to make the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history.

On the sixtieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, Andrei Cherny tells a remarkable story with profound implications for the world today. In the tradition of the best narrative storytellers, he brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States, and set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and to America’s victory in the Cold War.

On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies’, and most of America’s top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them.

Harry Truman, an accidental president, derided by his own party; Lucius Clay, a frustrated general, denied a combat command and relegated to the home front; Bill Tunner, a logistics expert downsized to a desk job in a corner of the Pentagon; James Forrestal, a secretary of defense beginning to mentally unravel; Hal Halvorsen, a lovesick pilot who had served far from the conflict, flying transport missions in the backwater of a global war—together these unlikely men improvised and stumbled their way into a uniquely American combination of military and moral force unprecedented in its time.

This is the forgotten foundation tale of America in the modern world, the story of when Americans learned, for the first time, how to act at the summit of world power—a masterful and exciting work of historical narrative, and one with strong resonance for our time..
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For the men of the Army Air Corps in early World War II, the chance of surviving the obligatory twenty-five missions without death, injury, or imprisonment was one in three. In this groundbreaking book, Rob Morris has sought out remarkable but little-known stories of the air war from the men who lived and fought it.

Based on hundreds of interviews with American veterans and their families, Untold Valor illuminates the courage of airmen whose exploits have until now remained untold. Read about Jewish aviators’ experiences as POWs in German camps. Learn about American airmen who were imprisoned, even killed, by the neutral Swiss and about two Air Corps enlisted men who changed U.S. policy toward liberated concentration camp survivors. Also discover the unusual story of Luftwaffe commander Herman Goering’s nephew, who flew B-17 missions against Germany. While some of the stories cover major events, most are about incidents and individuals misrepresented or overlooked by history books. Yet their efforts were vital, their lives forever changed.

Detailed and moving, Untold Valor is certain to interest the serious air historian and the casual reader alike. With a foreword by the editor of B–17s Over Berlin..
Price: $13.57 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler's doorstep With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes readers on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.

Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller's Air Force band, which toured U.S. air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers. In 1943, an American bomber crewman stood only a one-in-five chance of surviving his tour of duty, twenty-five missions. The Eighth Air Force lost more men in the war than the U.S. Marine Corps.

The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America -- white America, anyway. (African-Americans could not serve in the Eighth Air Force except in a support capacity.) The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the "King of Hollywood," Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men.The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.

Strategic bombing did not win the war, but the war could not have been won without it. American airpower destroyed the rail facilities and oil refineries that supplied the German war machine. The bombing campaign was a shared enterprise: the British flew under the cover of night while American bombers attacked by day, a technique that British commanders thought was suicidal.

Masters of the Air is a story, as well, of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.

Drawn from recent interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, Masters of the Air is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world's first and only bomber war..
Price: $6.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Stephen Ambrose is the acknowledged dean of the historians of World War II in Europe. In three highly acclaimed, bestselling volumes, he has told the story of the bravery, steadfastness, and ingenuity of the ordinary young men, the citizen soldiers, who fought the enemy to a standstill -- the band of brothers who endured together.

The very young men who flew the B-24s over Germany in World War II against terrible odds were yet another exceptional band of brothers, and, in The Wild Blue, Ambrose recounts their extraordinary brand of heroism, skill, daring, and comradeship with the same vivid detail and affection. With his remarkable gift for bringing alive the action and tension of combat, Ambrose carries us along in the crowded, uncomfortable, and dangerous B-24s as their crews fought to the death through thick black smoke and deadly flak to reach their targets and destroy the German war machine..
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From an acclaimed novelist, an emotionally complex and riveting story of suspicion, innocence, and regret

When a mail bomb explodes in the campus office next door, Lee, an Asian American math professor at a second-tier university in the Midwest, comes under suspicion. The authorities believe he may be the infamous “brain bomber,” an elusive terrorist whose primary targets are prominent scientists and mathematicians.

In the midst of campus tumult and grief over the star computer scientist who was killed by the bomb, Lee receives a disturbing letter from a figure in his past. Certain he is being targeted for revenge, he begins confronting key events in his life. Misunderstood by the people around him, Lee is not conscious that his behavior has begun to heighten suspicion in the minds of his colleagues, students, and neighbors, leading the FBI to designate him “a person of interest” and pushing his life and reputation to the verge of ruin.

Intricately plotted and engrossing, A Person of Interest asks how far one man can run from his past, and explores the impact of scrutiny and suspicion in an age of terror. With its propulsive drive and vividly realized characters, Susan Choi’s latest novel is as thrilling as it is lyrical, and confirms her place as one of the most important young novelists chronicling the American experience..
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Down Behind Enemy Lines: B-17 waist gunner, Sergeant Peter Seniawesky was somewhere deep in Germany Where he did not know. How many miles to the French border? He did not know. Even if he could miraculously reach France, what then? The entire country was occupied by Germans and French collab­orators. He had no weapon and only a candy bar for food. He did not speak German or French and was dressed in an American aviator's uni­form. Escape was too grand a word. Peter was trying to survive -- to evade capture. He spotted a lone tree on the other side of the stream. If he could reach that tree without being seen and if the farmer with the shotgun and the German soldiers did not search past the stream...if he was really lucky. He eased down the bank, crossed the stream, climbed the other bank and began slowly crawling toward the tree. Although he could not know it at the time, Peter was beginning on of the most amazing escape adventures of World War Two..
Price: $10.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Alfred Rydell, a American journalist, is murdered in his Istanbul apartment, Inspector Onur Levent is ordered to find the killer quickly for the sake of Turkish-American relations.

But Rydell's family has political clout. Thus Jason Ender with the U.S. State Department is rushed to Istanbul to find the answers demanded.

When Ender meets Levent, the expected clash of culture, methods, and objectives doesn't happen. Instead their professionalism allows them to combine their resources and move on quickly.

Neither man believes there was a simple motive behind Rydell's death. As they probe ever more deeply, the scope of their investigation suddenly expands into a desperate search for terrorists.

Time passes too swiftly as Ender and Levent race to thwart the terrorist plan intended to collapse the economy and government of Turkey, the only democracy in the Middle East. And thus to bring chaos to the entire region..
Price: $9.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The He177 was a formidable warplane with the potential to have been a lethal weapon for the Nazis. Unfortunately, it was ill-fated and suffered from serious problems such as an inherently poor engine design and 'knee-jerk' role diversification by the commanders in charge. Furthermore, the aircraft's development and testing was crucially damaged by the turbulent political environment of the day. Nazi leadership agonised over the aircraft's delay and deployment, and so the aircraft which enticed thousands with its daring potential, sadly failed to reach these standards.Nevertheless, the He177 was a remarkable warplane which adopted several different roles at various stages of its development. It was considered an excellent dive-bomber and strategic bomber, with the capabilities of an anti-shipping aircraft and transport and tank-destroyer. In this extensively researched new study, accomplished authors Richard Smith and Eddie Creek endeavour to shed new light on this sometimes overlooked aircraft and its unique service history. With a carefully selected collection of photographs and drawings which supplement the informative narrative, they have succeeded in producing a masterpiece which will be essential reading for all military and social historians of this period, as well as modellers keen to recreate this exceptional warplane..
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