$25.00
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Ambrose, Stephen E.,,
THE WILD BLUE: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. Simon & Schuster, 2001. Notes, bibliography, index, 299 pages. "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.
Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and then chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys -- turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B-24s -- who suffered over 50 percent casualties.
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. Twenty-two-year-old George McGovern, who was to become a United States senator and a presidential candidate, flew thirty-five combat missions (all the Army would allow) and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. We meet him and his mates, his co-pilot killed in action, and crews of other planes. Many went down in flames.
As Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers portrayed the bravery and ultimate victory of the American soldiers from Normandy on to Germany, The Wild Blue makes clear the contribution these young men of the Army Air Forces stationed in Italy made to the Allied victory. "
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$40.00
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Boiten, Theo and Martin Bowman,
Jane's BATTLES WITH THE LUFTWAFFE: THE Bomber Campaign against Germany, 1942-45.
NEW copy. Oversized hardcover with dust jacket.
(NY: HarperCollins, 2001). Photographs, appendices, index, 236 pages.
~~~
"This collection and analysis of first-hand accounts from World War II veteran aircrew
offers a fresh look at the day air war that raged over Europe from 1942 to 1945. It
retraces not only the course of events of the war years as experienced by both Allied
and Axis pilots, but also offers vivid descriptions of weaponry, aircraft and tactical
developments during the extensive bombing campaign against Germany." Illustrated with
some 300 photographs, many of which previously unpublished, Battles with the Luftwaffe
is a fascinating account of the realities of air-combat during World War II."
~~ Currently in print at $44.95.
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$55.00
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Comeau, M.G.,
OPERATION MERCURY: A BRITISH AIRMAN'S FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF THE FALL
OF CRETE IN 1941.
Patrick Stephens Limited, Somerset, England, 1991. Reprinted &
expanded from the William Kimber & Co. 1961 edition., NEW, a mint
copy. OUT OF PRINT. Maps, photographs, appendices, bibliography,
index, 232 pp. "The classic account of one of the great reversals of
the war, now updated with recently unearthed information.
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$53.00
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Davin, D.M.,
CRETE.
Battery Press reprint edition of the original 1953 edition published in New Zealand. Hardcover issued without dust
jacket; 58 photos/drawings; 28 maps; 565 pages. A volume in the official history of New Zealand in world War II.
Originally published in 1953, this volume is probably the best overall account of the operations in Crete in 1941.
This volume chronicles in great detail not onlyu he operations of the New Zealand forces defending Crete, but an
excellent study of the opposing German parachute forces during the battlke of April/May l94l. A detailed day by day
account of all operations to the surrender and withdrawal on June lst 1941.
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$35.00
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Dibbs, John & Tony Holmes,
SPITFIRE: FLYING LEGEND ~ THE FIGHTER & 'THE FEW'.
Osprey, 1999. NEW copy. Coffee table sized.
Hardcover with dust jacket, illustrated throughout with large-format
black & white and color photos, appendices, index, 192 pages. ~~
OUT OF PRINT.
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$35.00
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Faber, Harold (ed),
LUFTWAFFE: A HISTORY.
VG/VG. Jacket price-clipped, protected by mylar. (NY: Quadrangle/NY Times Book Co., 1977).
Photographs, organization tables, index, 291 pages. ~~ "In this fascinating book we are taken into the strange, self-defeating world of the Luftwaffe high command, with all its colorful characters and the destructive interplay of its personalities and revalries. the book draws heavily on primary sources, much of it coming from WWII debriefing statements from former Luftwaffe generals and captured Luftwaffe documents and diaries and photographs."
~~ OUT OF PRINT.
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$35.00
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Hinchliffe, Peter,
THE OTHER BATTLE: Luftwaffe Night Aces versus Bomber Command.
NEW copy. Hardcover
with dust jacket. (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1996) Photographs; Glossary of German
Words and Phrases; Bibliography; Index of Personalities, Aircraft and Selected Codewords. 352 pages.
~~~ This book traces the parallel development of night bombing within the RAF and
that of the Luftwaffe's Night Fighter Force, culminating in the strategic bombing offensive
and the German aerial defence against that offensive. It encompasses the historical,
strategic, tactical and technical aspects of the subject, and contains a large amount of
material based on personal experience.
~~~ Originally published at $29.95, now OUT OF PRINT.
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$35.00
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Lyall, Gavin (ed),
THE WAR IN THE AIR: The Royal Air force in World War II.
VG/VG--. Three-inch tear to jacket on front cover. Some creasing to jacket edges. Jacket in mylar.
Spine of book bumped at head & heel; otherwise clean and tight. (NY: Morrow & Company, 1969.)
Photos, glossary, bibliography, index, 422 pages.
~~~
"In 1968, William Morrow & Company published a distinguished anthology entitled The War at Sea: The British Navy in World War II. Editied by John Winton, Samuel Eliot Morison called it 'a naval anthology to end naval anthologyies', and we are confident that The War in the Air: The Royal Air force in World War II, a
companion volume to the naval anthology, will be received with equal enthusiasm. ~~~
All the great dramas of the air war are here described by the men in the British and commonwealth air Forces who actually did the fighting -- in the desperate days of the fall of france, during the incredible Battle of Britain, throughout the agony of Bomber Command, over the high seas, through Malta, the desert battles, and in the
struggle with the Japanese. ~~~ The names of some of the contributors will be recognized by most American readers -- Winston Churchill, Alan Moorehead, Neville Chamberlain, Lord Beaverbrook -- but most of the names will not, for this rich harvest of personal experience is drawn primarily from the accounts and descriptions of the fighting men. The War in the Air
describes a daring and an endurance which, in retrospect, seem beyond the bounds of possibility. But this is how it was."
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$30.00
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Morgan, Col. Robert, USAFR, Ret., with Ron Powers,
THE MAN WHO FLEW THE MEMPHIS BELLE: Memoir of a WWII Bomber Pilot.
NF/NF. (NY: Dutton, 2001). Photographic plates, appendices, bibliography, 389 pages.
~~~~ From Publishers Weekly:
"Made famous in a 1944 William Wyler documentary and inspiring a 1990 movie starring Matthew
Modine, Harry Conick Jr. and Eric Stolz Morgan, a B17F "Flying Fortress" pilot, here fleshes
out his own story, together with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Powers (Flags of Our
Fathers). Morgan's depression-era childhood in Asheville, N.C., was cushioned by his mother's
friendship with Cornelia Vanderbilt, who stepped in when the family went bust. Fond of fast cars
and women, a grown-up Morgan joined the Army Air Corps in late 1940 and found that he had a
natural talent for flying. In spite of less than perfect eyesight, he was chosen to pilot the
newly developed Flying Fortress, designed to take flak and keep flying. When he met Memphis-born
Margaret Polk, the two fell in love and planned to marry. On every mission over Germany and
France, Morgan flew the Memphis Belle with a photo of Polk taped to the instrument panel,
which made for great publicity. After 25 harrowing daylight
missions, the crew endured an exhausting 31-city U.S. tour, which ruined Morgan's marriage
plans and led to his assignment as a B-29 Superfortress squadron commander. He flew 26
missions over Japan in 1944 and early 1945 before being rotated home. His search for the
woman to replace his deceased mother led him through several marriages and engagements,
which he chronicles in detail. Morgan also recounts (with the aid of 16 pages of photos)
the tale of the Memphis Belle itself, which went from being a vandalized and forgotten plane
to a national treasure. (On-sale: May 7) Forecast: Fans of military memoirs will like the
first-person straight talk and action, but few outside the subject will come along for the
ride through Morgan's personal life, though it is presented with ease and relative candor.
And with Memphis Belle the movie 10 years in the can, there's little hope of the book being
swept along in its breeze, despite Morgan's heroics."
~~~ Hardcover OUT OF PRINT.
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$35.00
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Scott, Stuart R.,.
BATTLE-AXE BLENHEIMS: No 105 SQUADRON RAF AT WAR 1940-1.
Budding Books., 1997. NEW copy. Photographs,
tables, appendices, bibliography, index, 235 pages.
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$25.00
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Spick, Mike,
LUFTWAFFE VICTORIOUS: An Alternative History
NEW copy. Hardcover in dust jacket. Military Book Club Edition. Photographs, bibliography, 256 pages.Hermann Göring described his vision of the Luftwaffe in 1940 as an air force with “lightning speed and undreamed-of might.” He succeeded in creating the monster of his dreams. What if he had been removed from the picture shortly after his creation took wing? Luftwaffe Victorious does a spectacular job exploring the scenario.
When Göring brazenly flies a mission in the Battle of Britain, his plane is shot down and the Luftwaffe’s number-one is killed. Command then goes to Albert Kessilring, in reality a more professional and respected commander than Göring could ever hoped to have been. As a result, the Luftwaffe is altered from the tactical power that in reality it was, to a world-class strategic force. The entire grid of WW II is changed.
Author Mike Spick meticulously follows the path, taking into consideration the personalities of the Luftwaffe’s new leaders—and the new weapons and strategies that would likely have followed. Spick’s extensive knowledge and painstaking research of actual German weapons programs adds a real authoritativeness to Luftwaffe Victorious; yes, it’s alternative history, but it’s also based very much on reality. The story is so detailed—right down to specs and diagrams of the Do 19A and its preferred attack formation—that it seems all the more plausible.
When you begin reading Luftwaffe Victorious, you enter another world. But the beauty is that it doesn’t seem too strange for long. With Göring gone, it all just makes sense. 256 pages.
With the death of Hermann Göring and his monstrous ego early on in WW II, we see:
• The Luftwaffe’s quick completion of the Dornier Do 19A strategic bomber
• The carrier Graf Zeppelin wreaking havoc on the Allied forces
• An advanced generation of U-boats prowling the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean as late as 1945
• Allied disaster at Normandy, brought on largely by German jets and their armor-piercing ammo
• Munich suffering history’s first A-bomb attack
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$125.00
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Stroud, John,
THE RED AIR FORCE. The history of Soviet aviation and a survey
of the aircraft at present in service
.
VG/VG--. Jacket is price-clipped & chipped. A piece roughly the size of a
quarter is missing from rear panel (text unaffected). Book itself is tight & clean: bright red
cloth covers with gilt Soviet star on front. 8.5 x 11.
(London: The Pilot Press, 1943).
Despite being a wartime product,
book has glossy pages throughout and photos are therefore of higher quality
than is usual for books published during the war.
48 pages.
~~~ "The first full-length and illustrated account of what was once the 'mystery' Air Force among the Great Powers.
Following the early history of aviation in the U.S.S.R., Mr Stroud describes the types of aircraft at present in service
on the Russo-German War-front. There are also chapters on Arctic flying, transport aircraft, paratroops and gliding, and
the Red Air Force organization."
~~~ S C A R C E, particularly in jacket. OUT OF PRINT.
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$25.00
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Taylor, Frederick,
DRESDEN: Tuesday, February 13, 1945.
NEW copy. HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. Hardcover with dust jacket.
376 pages. " The bombing began shortly after 10:00 P.M. on February 13, 1945. In the fifteen hours that followed, 1,100 American and British heavy bombers dropped more than 4,500 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices, leaving the ancient city of Dresden - "the Florence of the Elbe" - in flaming ruins and claiming the lives of thousands of its citizens. Twelve weeks later the German surrender was in hand, signaling the end of World War II.
Yet today the bombing of Dresden is embedded in our collective consciousness not as the toppling blow to Nazi Germany but as one of history's cruelest wartime atrocities, a vicious and militarily unjustifiable act of vengeful retribution against a peaceful, beautiful, defenseless city somehow removed from the war-making machinery that had otherwise consumed all of Germany.
What really happened at Dresden - both the facts of the events themselves and the reasons behind the remarkable legacy of propaganda that has left us in the dark about those events for nearly sixty years - is the subject of Frederick Taylor's groundbreaking study. After careful research into British, American, and German archives (including recently discovered documents, now available after decades of communist censorship) and interviews with both bombers and survivors, Taylor - a bilingual scholar, translator, and writer - has created the most complete portrait ever assembled of the city, its people, and those involved in its fate.
Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 is the first truly informed and fair-minded history of the bombing that lives in infamy. Frederick Taylor's book, a corrective to a sixty-year-long legacy of misinformation masquerading as fact, will beremembered for generations both as a work of enduring scholarship and as a narrative of a human tragedy of historic significance.
"
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$35.00
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Sandler, Stanley,
SEGREGATED SKIES: All-Black Combat Squadrons of WWII.
NF/VG--. Jacket (in mylar) torn & creased on upper right corner of front cover, but no pieces missing.
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).
Photographic plates, appendices, extensive notes, bibliography, index, 217 pages.
~~~ "When the United States Army Air Corps, responding to pressure, opened its ranks to blacks in July 1941, it formed four fighter squadrons exclusively composed of black men. Known as the Tuskegee Airmen, these squadrons represented the total number of blacks who saw action in United States combat aviation in the Second World War. Compiling the operational and combat history of the Tuskegee Airmen, Stanley Sandler examines the history of these pioneer black units--from their early training at Tuskegee, Alabama, to aerial combat in the European theater. He reveals how the squadrons and the fighter group, disadvantaged by inexperience and intense national scrutiny, succeeded in compiling impressive combat records. Ultimately, Sandler states, the Tuskegee Airmen would lead the United States Air Force toward racial parity in the post-war era, years ahead of American society itself. Sandler draws on oral interviews, the units' official records as well as those of the Army and the Army Air Forces, and the federal government archives. He describes blacks' early noncombatant roles in the Army Air Corps--grave registration, housecleaning, supply, and transport. He details the eventual inclusion of black men in combat aviation, beginning with the 99th Pursuit Squadron, whose members were the first blacks to enter American military aviation, as well as the 332nd Fighter Group.
~~~ From Publishers Weekly: "Sandler chronicles the pioneering efforts of the
all-black 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Medium Bomber Group during WW II, emphasizing how
painfuly aware the pilots and ground crew were of having to ``prove'' themselves as no white
squadron had to. For example, Air Corps chief Gen. Henry Arnold resented their presence in his
service: ``The Negro tires easily,'' he wrote in a notorious memo. In a postwar evaluation, the
Air Force concluded that the 332nd was a mediocre outfit, `not worth the time and effort'; but
Sandler ( The Emergence of the Modern Capital Ship ) argues that the record demonstrates that it
was a ``good to average'' group whose efficiency was warped by the demands of racial segregation.
The unit's war record was unique in one respect: in its hundreds of escort missions, the 332nd
did not lose a single bomber to enemy aircraft. The 477th never saw action. Drawn from interviews
and offical documents, this important history reveals how the wartime experience of a relative
handful of black pilots and crewmen opened the way for racial integration of the armed forces
within five years after the end of the war."
OUT OF PRINT.
"
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$30.00
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[Zemke] Roger A. Freeman,
ZEMKE'S WOLF PACK: The Story of Hub Zemke and the 56th Fighter Group in the Skies Over Europe.
.
VG/NF. Book is as new except for several tiny punctures and half-inch tear to front flyleaf (NY: Orion Books, 1988).
First American Edition. Photographs, index, 256 pages.
~~~ Under the tenacious and inspired leadership of Colonel Hub Zemke, the U.S. Eighth Air Force's elite 56th Fighter Group emerged as the most successful American fighter unit in Europe. Flying red-nosed P-47 Thunderbolts, the group scored more aerial victories than any other in this theater, its aggressive leader himself downing nineteen German aircraft.
After a brief stint in Russia teaching the Soviets to fly the new Curtiss P-40, Zemke arrived in England in Sept 1942 to take over the 56th Fighter Group known as the "Wolf Pack". His squadron was assigned to escort the bombers of the Eighth Air Force going up against heavy concentrations of German fighters in their raids into the heart of Germany. Never a man to court favor, Zemke was frequently at odds with his superiors over the best method of doing his job. But the flight disciplines and tactics he evolved, whether flying bomber escort duties or strafing ground targets after D-Day, made him an outstanding leader whose high personal standards also caused him to require equally stringent standards of the men who flew with him. A respected and trusted (if not always liked) leader, these traits were again evident when he became Senior Allied Officer in Stalag Luft I, after his aircraft disintegrated in a storm and he was captured.
~~~ Originally published at $19.95, now OUT OF PRINT.
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