Author: Barbara Woodall Taylor Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820346152 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 405
Book Description
During World War II, the millions of letters American servicemen exchanged with their wives and sweethearts were a lifeline, a vital way of sustaining morale on both fronts. Intimate and poignant, Miss You offers a rich selection from the correspondence of one such couple, revealing their longings, affection, hopes, and fears and affording a privileged look at how ordinary people lived through the upheavals of the last century's greatest conflict.
Author: Ralph Lee Minker Publisher: Word Assn Pub ISBN: 9781595710819 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 432
Book Description
An American Family in World War II is the moving story of Cpt. Ralph Minker and his family during this tumultuous time in American history. Captain Minker, a pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corps 447th Bomb Group, 409th Squadron, flew 37 combat missions. This book contains correspondence with his parents and sisters that describe his life during WWII. This book addresses issues of the home front with commentary from the editors.
Author: Charles E. Stanley Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1684512824 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Late in 1944, thirteen U.S. B-24 bomber crews bailed from their cabins over the Yugoslavian wilderness. Bloodied and disoriented after a harrowing strike against the Third Reich, the pilots took refugee with the Partisan underground. But the Americans were far from safety. Holed up in a village barely able to feed its citizens, encircled by Nazis, and left abandoned after a team of British secret agents failed to secure their escape, the airmen were left with little choice. It was either flee or be killed. In The Lost Airmen, Charles Stanely Jr. unveils the shocking true story of his father, Charles Stanely-and the eighteen brave soldiers he journeyed with for the first time. Drawing on over twenty years of research, dozens of interviews, and previously unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs written by the airmen, Stanley recounts the deadly journey across the blizzard-swept Dinaric Alps during the worst winter of the Twentieth Century-and the heroic men who fought impossible odds to keep their brothers in arms alive.
Author: Linda Gartz Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 163152321X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 367
Book Description
Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, Redlined exposes the racist lending rules that refuse mortgages to anyone in areas with even one black resident. As blacks move deeper into Chicago’s West Side during the 1960s, whites flee by the thousands. But Linda Gartz’s parents, Fred and Lil choose to stay in their integrating neighborhood, overcoming previous prejudices as they meet and form friendships with their African American neighbors. The community sinks into increasing poverty and crime after two race riots destroy its once vibrant business district, but Fred and Lil continue to nurture their three apartment buildings and tenants for the next twenty years in a devastated landscape—even as their own relationship cracks and withers. After her parents’ deaths, Gartz discovers long-hidden letters, diaries, documents, and photos stashed in the attic of her former home. Determined to learn what forces shattered her parents’ marriage and undermined her community, she searches through the family archives and immerses herself in books on racial change in American neighborhoods. Told through the lens of Gartz’s discoveries of the personal and political, Redlined delivers a riveting story of a community fractured by racial turmoil, an unraveling and conflicted marriage, a daughter’s fight for sexual independence, and an up-close, intimate view of the racial and social upheavals of the 1960s.
Author: Elliott White Springs Publisher: ISBN: 9781611170405 Category : Fighter pilots Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Ranked among the top five American flying aces of World War I, Elliot White Springs (1896-1959) was credited with shooting down twelve enemy aircraft during his tour in France. In the postwar years, he was a prolific writer whose nine books include War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator, a classic air combat narrative. After his father's death in 1931, Springs inherited Springs Mills and quickly became one of South Carolina's most innovative and successful textile mill owners. Edited by David K. Vaughan, this engaging collection of Springs's wartime correspondence follows the derring-do of an accomplished World War I fighter pilot before he became one of the best-known tycoons in modern South Carolina history. Following enlistment at Princeton University, Springs was sent to England, where he trained with the Royal Flying Corps and joined the prestigious British 85 Squadron, commanded by Canadian ace William "Billy" Bishop. Springs had earned four kills before being wounded in a crash landing in June 1918. On return to duty he transferred to the 148th Aero Squadron of the U.S. Army, where he remained for the next four months. By the end of the war, Springs had amassed eight more kills and was awarded the British Distinguished Flying Cross and the American Distinguished Service Cross. Because of his unique career as a pilot in both British and American flying squadrons, Springs was able to offer especially colorful descriptions of his flight training and aerial combat experiences from both perspectives. Grouped into sections according to his training and combat assignments, Springs's letters from his combat years are rife with the wit, bravado, and fatalism of a young aviator deeply enthralled with the wartime culture of England and France. His detailed accounts of dogfights bring readers into the action with all the vigor and danger of the era. In contextualizing this correspondence, Vaughan explores Springs's complex relationships with his father and young stepmother on the home front and maps the connections between Springs's firsthand experiences and his subsequent literary endeavors. This collection highlights the thrills, tactics, and technical aspects of early air warfare from the candid perspectives of a brave young flyer with deadly aim, unflinching nerves, and a prosperous future waiting for him back in his native South Carolina.
Author: Jody Russell Vialy Publisher: Dorrance Publishing ISBN: 164913455X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 84
Book Description
Letters From My Father: The Battle of the Brenner: World War ll By: Jody Russell Vialy Here is a story of a daughter discovering long lost letters from her father, written home while flying twenty-two missions as a bombardier during World War II. In one of the decisive battles of the war, she was able to relive through him his thoughts and hardships during this tumultuous period of his life. For her family, these letters are especially endearing as he passed away in 1985 without much recounting of his time in the war. There is so much to be learned from him through the letters within, not only as a father, but as an airman fighting for his country. This engrossing, firsthand chronicle details his time in northern Italy and southern Germany in 1945.
Author: Fred S. Lull Publisher: History Publishing Group ISBN: 9780752464688 Category : B-17 bomber Languages : en Pages : 287
Book Description
This wartime biography follows the life of a Second World War B-17 bombardier from the beginning of the war to its conclusion. Based on the 150 letters the airman, Fred Lull, wrote home to his mother, much of the horrors of what he experienced off the wing of his plane, aircraft destroyed, dismemberment by flak, go unshared. Fred did not want his mother to worry and could not tell her: 'I noticed some movement and a flash of light out of the corner of my right eye. The plane that had been flying right next to us had exploded and simply disappeared.'Using the bombardier's combat flight record, research data and interviews of former B-17 crew members, the story unfolds, breaking through the barrier of an unwillingness and inability to tell loved ones of the smell and taste of war.
Author: United States. USAF Historical Division Publisher: ISBN: Category : United States Languages : en Pages : 856
Book Description
This collection of squadron histories has been prepared by the USAF Historical Division to complement the Division's book, Air Force Combat Units of World War II. The 1,226 units covered by this volume are the combat (tactical) squadrons that were active between 7 December 1941 and 2 September 1945. Each squadron is traced from its beginning through 5 March 1963, the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the 1st Aero (later Bombardment) Squadron, the first Army unit to be equipped with aircraft for tactical operations. For each squadron there is a statement of the official lineage and data on the unit's assignments, stations, aircraft and missiles, operations, service streamers, campaign participation, decorations, and emblem.
Author: Harry H. Crosby Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504067320 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 366
Book Description
“A compelling account of the air war against Germany” written by the navigator portrayed by Anthony Boyle in Apple TV’s Masters of the Air (Publishers Weekly). They began operations out of England in the spring of ’43. They flew their Flying Fortresses almost daily against strategic targets in Europe in the name of freedom. Their astonishing courage and appalling losses earned them the name that resounds in the annals of aerial warfare and made the “Bloody Hundredth” a legend. Harry H. Crosby—depicted in the miniseries Masters of the Air developed by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg—arrived with the very first crews, and left with the very last. After dealing with his fear and gaining in skill and confidence, he was promoted to Group Navigator, surviving hairbreadth escapes and eluding death while leading thirty-seven missions, some of them involving two thousand aircraft. Now, in a breathtaking and often humorous account, he takes us into the hearts and minds of these intrepid airmen to experience both the triumph and the white-knuckle terror of the war in the skies. “Affecting . . . A vivid account . . . Uncommonly thoughtful recollections that address the moral ambiguities of a great cause without in any way denigrating the selfless valor or camaraderie that helped ennoble it.” —Kirkus Reviews “Re-creates for us the sense of how it was when European skies were filled with noise and danger, when the fate of millions hung in the balance. An evocative and excellent memoir.” —Library Journal “The acrid stench of fear and cordite, the coal burning stoves, the heroics, the losses . . . This has to be the best memoir I have read, bar none.” —George Hicks, director of the Airmen Memorial Museum
Author: Barbara Woodall Taylor
Author: Ralph Lee Minker
Author: Charles E. Stanley
Author: Linda Gartz
Author: Elliott White Springs
Author: Jody Russell Vialy
Author: Fred S. Lull
Author: Maurer Maurer
Author: United States. USAF Historical Division
Author: Harry H. Crosby