The life-story of Lady Lucy Houston DBE must surely be one of the most romantic and dramatic epics of the last one hundred and fifty years, yet nowadays she is a 'woman unknown'. She had a beautiful face, a graceful figure and a sharp intelligence, and over the years she would exploit her charismatic charm, first as a teenager to entice a wealthy lover, and subsequently to lead three husbands to the altar. She was an ardent and productive campaigner for women's rights, conducting outstanding works of charity during the Great War, such as providing a convalescent home for nurses returning from the front line. In recognition of these endeavours, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1917. After the death of her third husband, a known misogynist, 'under mysterious circumstances', she was temporarily certified mad, but his Will was to make her the richest woman in England. During the rest of her eventful and eccentric lifetime, she spent her fortune on a vast number of charitable causes, whilst waging a feisty political campaign against weak British politicians of all parties.As a great admirer of how Mussolini had restored Italy's patriotic self-esteem, she championed men like Winston Churchill as the future saviour of her own beloved country. But her greatest legacy arose from her steadfast support for the Royal Air Force, whose finances were being crippled. She funded the 1931 Schneider Trophy Race as well as the Houston Everest Expedition of 1933. This funding had a crucial bearing on the development of the Merlin engine and the Spitfire aircraft, essentially kick starting the chain of events that would ultimately end in allied victory during the Battle of Britain. She died before the cataclysmic war that she so accurately predicted however, her death being precipitated by an infatuation with Edward, Prince of Wales. In spite of her many eccentricities, the enchanting, infuriating, inspiring and endlessly controversial Lucy Houston deserves to be remembered as a very patriotic lady indeed.

The small number of Finnish fighter pilots who defended Finland in three separate wars between 1939 and 1945 amassed scores only bettered by the Luftwaffe's pilots. Initially equipped with a mixed collection of fighters acquired from sources across the world, the Finnish Air Force was thrust into combat in the defensive Winter War against an invasion by the Soviet Union in 1939, followed by the Continuation War, together with Germany and the other Axis powers against the Soviets, in 1941–1944. The third conflict, the Lapland War against Germany, occurred in 1944–1945. Aircraft of the famous Finnish aces are described in detail with many photos and color profiles. This book includes the aircraft of Ilmari Juutilainen, Hans Wind, and Eino Luukkanen, among others. It is an essential reading for aviation enthusiasts and scale aeromodelers.

"We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives." So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or "tokkotai," who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II.
This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the "tokkotai "and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation's imperialism.
A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II.

"We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives." So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or "tokkotai," who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II.
This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the "tokkotai "and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer, and in their diaries and correspondence they often wrote heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear and expressed profound ambivalence toward the war as well as opposition to their nation's imperialism.
A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II. "Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's book is designed to challenge Western perceptions of the kamikaze generation. By assembling brief biographies of some of the young Japanese who perished on suicide missions, and by quoting extensively from their wartime diaries and poetry, she portrays a group of literate, thoughtful people, most of whom hated the war and were reluctant to die."--" SundayTelegraph "(UK)

Coastal Command, created in 1936 alongside Fighter and Bomber Commands in the reorganisation of the RAF in its preparations for the coming war, was Britain's mainstay in the battle against the German submarine. As more and more Allied merchantmen were sunk during the long voyage from North America, the Mediterranean, and points south, tracking down the U-Boats became a constant struggle against harsh weather on long-distance patrols out over the Atlantic and Bay of Biscay. To counter the threat, Coastal Command established a ring of bases stretching from Scotland and Northern Ireland to Iceland, and from south Wales and south-western Britain to Gibraltar and the Azores, all 53 of these stations are covered in this book. 700 illustrations

This is a true historical account of war in the air, at sea and on land in the battle for Malta's survival in the Second World War. It was a battle which decided the outcome of the war in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Adrian Warburton, the airman described in the subtitle by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, went missing in 1944 in a single-seat American aircraft. He had flown at least 395 operational missions mostly from Malta. Unusually for a reconnaissance pilot, 'Warby' as he was known was credited with nine aircraft shot down. He lay undiscovered for sixty years. He is the RAF's most highly decorated photo-recce pilot.In Malta, Adrian met Christina, a stranded dancer turned aircraft plotter in the secret world deep beneath Valletta's fortress walls. She too was decorated for heroism. Together, they became part of the island's folklore. How important was Malta and the girl from Cheshire to the man behind the medals? This tale takes the form of a quest opening in a cemetery in Bavaria and closing in another in Malta.In between, the reader is immersed within the tension and drama surrounding Malta's Greater Siege retracing the steps of the main characters over the forever changed face of the island following its heroic victory.

Listen to a short interview with Jeffrey A. Engel Host: Chris Gondek ] Producer: Heron & Crane

In a gripping story of international power and deception, Jeffrey Engel reveals the "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain in a new and far more competitive light. As allies, they fought communism. As rivals, they locked horns over which would lead the Cold War fight. In the quest for sovereignty and hegemony, one important key was airpower, which created jobs, forged ties with the developing world, and, perhaps most importantly in a nuclear world, ensured military superiority.

Only the United States and Britain were capable of supplying the post-war world's ravenous appetite for aircraft. The Americans hoped to use this dominance as a bludgeon not only against the Soviets and Chinese, but also against any ally that deviated from Washington's rigid brand of anticommunism. Eager to repair an economy shattered by war and never as committed to unflinching anticommunism as their American allies, the British hoped to sell planes even beyond the Iron Curtain, reaping profits, improving East-West relations, and garnering the strength to withstand American hegemony.

Engel traces the bitter fights between these intimate allies from Europe to Latin America to Asia as each sought control over the sale of aircraft and technology throughout the world. The Anglo-American competition for aviation supremacy affected the global balance of power and the fates of developing nations such as India, Pakistan, and China. But without aviation, Engel argues, Britain would never have had the strength to function as a brake upon American power, the way trusted allies should.

On March 24th, 1999, President Clinton announced that the United States, along with NATO allies, had initiated air strikes against the Serbian forces of Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo. After seventy-eight days of bombing, Milosevic agreed to withdraw his army from Kosovo. With no troops on the ground, political and military leaders congratulated themselves on the success of Operation Allied Force, considered to be the first military victory won through the use of strategic air power. This apparent triumph motivated military and political leaders to embrace a policy of precision munitions and air strikes as the preferred choice for answering military aggression and, eventually, inspired a similar air campaign ten years later against Muammar Gadaffi's forces in Libya as a wave of protests erupted into revolution. Clean Bombs and Dirty Wars: Employing Air Power over Kosovo and Libya offers a fresh perspective on the role, relevance, and effectiveness of air power in contemporary warfare, including an exploration of the political motivations for its use as well as a candid examination of air-to-ground targeting processes. Using recently declassified archival materials from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library along with primary evidence culled from social media posted during the Arab Spring, author Robert Gregory shows that the extreme argument that air power "does it alone" and eliminates the necessity for boots on the ground is an artificial claim and that the popular perception forged in Kosovo and carried forth in Libyan operations--that air power succeeded without the need for a ground contingent--is illusory.

The 'Swinging Sixties' was a remarkable decade. For the Royal Air Force it was a most interesting period in their history, representing a period of base closures, contraction and a significant change in equipment - especially in the level of technology operated. In 1960, all three of the V-bombers - Valiant, Vulcan and Victor - were in service. The English Electric Lightning established a firm place in British aviation history by being the first single-seat fighter designed to exceed the speed of sound in level flight. Within Transport Command, the Britannia C.1 was operating alongside the Comet C.2, providing an excellent strategic transport capability. The Comet C.4 would enter service in 1962, the VC-10 C.1 in July 1966 and the Belfast C.1 by the end of 1966. During the decade, the RAF celebrated its 50th Anniversary, having been formed on 1 April 1918. They also came to be embroiled in a number of conflicts, while still playing their part (alongside the British Army and the Royal Navy) in policing a number of territories and theaters including Malaya, Indonesia, Cyprus, Kenya, Rhodesia, Aden, Libya, Bermuda and Anguilla in the West Indies.Here, Keith Wilson takes us on a richly illustrated journey through the decade, with each chapter focusing on a specific year and relaying all the fascinating events and highlights that characterized it. This is a colourful and insightful history, told with narrative flair and a clear passion for the subject matter at hand.

During the course of aviation history, there have been very few aircraft that have achieved immediate success when entering front-line service. The arrival of the de Havilland Mosquito brought with it a degree of instant success that set it apart from a host of other aircraft. It was not designed to an RAF requirement, but was the result of an initiative of the designers and builders to utilize the skills of woodworkers and the relative abundance of wood in the crisis years of World War II. The result was an aircraft that could be built quickly, was extremely fast and immensely versatile. Pilots loved it and the opportunities opened up to them as a result of the capabilities of this new and exciting aircraft. Here, Graham Simons describes in detail how the de Havilland Mosquito was built, utilizing many rare photographs from the design studio and production lines. It illustrates and explains the many different roles that the aircraft took as the war progressed. Fighter, bomber, reconnaissance, night fighter - there were few tasks that this brilliant design could not adopt.

The product of a lifetimes reflection, The Last Escaper is Peter Tunstall's unforgettable memoir of his days in the RAF and as one of the most celebrated of all British POWs. Tunstall was an infamous tormentor of his German captors dubbed the cooler king (on account of his long spells in solitary), but also a highly skilled pilot, loyal friend and trusted colleague. Without false pride or bitterness, Tunstall recounts the high jinks of training to be a pilot, terrifying bombing raids in his Hampden and of elaborate escape attempts at once hilarious and deadly serious all part of a poignant and human war story superbly told by a natural raconteur. The Last Escaper is a charming and hugely informative last testament written by the last man standing from the Colditz generation who risked their lives in the Second World War. It will take its place as one of the classic first-hand accounts of that momentous conflict.

World War II is enshrined in our collective memory as the good war - a victory of good over evil. However, the bombing war has always troubled this narrative as total war transformed civilians into legitimate targets and raised unsettling questions such as whether it was possible for Allies and Axis alike to be victims of aggression. In Bombing the City, an unprecedented comparative history of how ordinary Britons and Japanese experienced bombing, Aaron William Moore offers a major new contribution to these debates. Utilising hundreds of diaries, letters, and memoirs, he recovers the voices of ordinary people on both sides - from builders, doctors and factory-workers to housewives, students and policemen - and reveals the shared experiences shaped by gender, class, race, and age. He reveals how it was that the British and Japanese public continued to support bombing elsewhere even as they experienced firsthand its terrible impact at home.

Updated edition to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. It is difficult to overestimate the excitement that accompanied the birth of the Spitfire. An aircraft imbued with balletic grace and extraordinary versatility, it was powered by a piston engine and a propeller, yet came tantalisingly close to breaking the sound barrier. First flown in 1936, the Spitfire soon came to symbolize Britain's defiance of Nazi Germany in the summer of 1940. Spitfire: The Biography is a celebration of a great British invention, of the men and women who flew it and supported its development, and of the industry that manufactured both the aircraft and the Rolls-Royce engines that powered it. It is also about the ways in which the sight, sound and fury of this lithe and legendary fighter continue to stir the public imagination worldwide more than eighty years on.

No single human invention has changed the nature of war more that the development of the aeroplane. The History of Air Warfare is a highly illustrated and accessible account of the development of aerial warfare, from the first skirmishes over the Western Front in World War I to today's hi-tech netcentric aerial battlespace. Developing from unpowered observation hot air balloons in the 18th century and even the older kite, aerial warfare has become a multibillion-dollar industry and has led to many advances in technology and techniques such as aerodynamics, propulsion, radar and use of composites and engineered materials such as carbon fibre. Featuring more than 120 complex computer-generated battle maps and graphics, the History of Air Warfare explores every major air battle to have taken place in the world's skies, as well as documenting the air element of campaigns such as Operation Barbarossa and Operation Desert Storm. Extensively researched text tells the history and the stories behind these battles concisely and clearly.

The fourth volume in this momentous series commences with the attacks on the Italian island fortress of Pantellaria which led to its surrender and occupation achieved almost by air attack alone. The account continues with the ultimately successful, but at times very hard fought, invasions of Sicily and southern Italy as burgeoning Allied air power, now with full US involvement, increasingly dominated the skies overhead. The successive occupations of Sardinia and Corsica are also covered in detail. This volume, then, is essentially the story of the tactical air forces up to the point when Rome was occupied, just at the same time as the Normandy landings were occurring in north-west France. In its pages are found what can justifiably be considered the story of `the soldiers' air force'. Frequently overlooked by more immediate newsworthy events elsewhere, their struggle was often of an equally Homeric nature. With regards to the long-range tactical role of the Allied heavy bombers, only the period from May to October is examined herein, while they remained based in North Africa. Thus the period from November 1943 when the US 15th Air Force was formed to pursue the strategic air offensive against the Reich, together with the RAF's 205 Group of night bombers, will be covered in a future (sixth) volume. Volume Five will deal with the rest of the tactical war in Italy and Greece, over the Adriatic and Aegean, and with the entry into the South of France to join forces advancing southwards from Normandy.

Invitation to Peace Studies is the first textbook in the field to emphasize 21st-century research and controversies and to encourage the more frequent use of a gender perspective in analyzing peace, war and violence. Recent empirical research forms the core of most chapters, but substantial attention is also given to faith-based ideas, movements, and peace pioneers. The book examines compelling contemporary topics like cyber warfare, drones, robots, digital activism, hactivism, the physiology of peace, rising rates of suicide, and peace through health. It is also unique in its use of a single coherent perspective-that of a global peace network-to make sense of the historically unprecedented and interconnected web of diverse ideas, individuals, groups, organizations, and movements currently promoting peace across the world.

The striking power of the Imperial Japanese Navy's carrier- based attack aircraft was established at Pearl Harbor, and the IJN's carrier- based torpedo and dive- bombers showed their prowess again at the Battle of Coral Sea when they sank the US Navy carrier USS Lexington and damaged the carrier USS Yorktown. Even at the disastrous Battle of Midway, the relatively small number of IJNAF attack- and torpedo-bombers that were launched against the US fleet proved that they remained a potent force by heavily damaging Yorktown again, which allowed an IJN submarine to sink the carrier. At Guadalcanal, IJNAF carrier-based aircraft sank the carrier USS Hornet and badly damaged USS Enterprise twice. However, throughout 1942, US Navy ship defences brought down an increasing number of attacking IJNAF aircraft. The final major battle of the year, the Battle of Santa Cruz, exacted crippling losses on the IJN, setting the stage for the eclipse of the IJNAF's highly trained and effective aviation attack forces. Packed with illustrations and contemporary photographs, this engrossing volume details the design, tactics, and operational records of both the US Navy ships and the IJNAF aircraft which attacked them over the year following Pearl Harbor.

Air Commodore Peter Malam 'Pete' Brothers CBE, DSO, DFC, and Bar (1917-2008) was one of the most heroic and highly praised pilots of the Second World War. Decorated extensively, he secured a total of 16 'kills' over the course of the conflict, with 10 of these occurring during the Battle of Britain. Pivotal moments in his career include the time, in August 1940, when his flight encountered around a hundred enemy aircraft, including Messerschmitt 110's; he led the flight in attack against them, and soon found himself in a stalled position, out of which he spun, only to be confronted by a Dornier 215, which he shot down, before later destroying a Messerschmitt 109. Scores of these kind of risky manoeuvres and winning victories punctuated a career defined by great courage, leadership and initiative in the face of fierce opposition. This new and engaging biography profiles a pilot who, until now, hasn't been the subject of such a thorough book-length study. The story of his career is incredibly entertaining, featuring a number of hair-raising episodes, and is sure to appeal to fans of aviation history as well as the more general reader seeking out an action-packed biography offering fresh insights into one of the most pivotal conflicts of the twentieth century.

Between 1940 and 1945, more than 100,000 airmen were shot down over Europe, a few thousand of whom survived and avoided being arrested. When Men Fell from the Sky is a comparative history of the treatment of these airmen by civilians in France, Germany and Britain. By studying the situation on the ground, Claire Andrieu shows how these encounters reshaped societies at a local level. She reveals how the fall of France in 1940 may have concealed an insurrection nipped in the bud, that the 'People's War' in Britain was not merely a myth, and that in Germany, the 'racial community of the people' had in fact become a social reality with Allied airmen increasingly subjected to lynching from 1943 onwards. By considering why the treatment of these airmen contrasted so strongly in these countries, Andrieu sheds new light on how civilians reacted when confronted with the war 'at home'.

Many books have been written about the Hawker Hunter, one of the world's great jet fighters. The majority, however, have tended to concentrate on the aircraft's extensive service career. Superbly illustrated with both colour and black-and-white photographs of the Hawker Hunter - which has always been one of the most photogenic of all aeroplanes - this new title is the first devoted specifically to the Hunter's design and development: how and why the aircraft came into being, the troubles it experienced on the way, its flight test programme and what it was like to pilot. Drawing on many original Air Staff and Ministry documents and also the Hawker aircraft day-to-day diaries, it tells the story of one-off modifications and trials projects, aerodynamic modifications and tests with various weapons, along with proposed developments, including supersonic versions.

A quiet market town with no military presence was chosen as the secret communications centre for Britain as the country prepared for war with Germany in 1937. When hostilities began, 'Q Central' attracted a dozen other clandestine operations set up to defend the country or designed to confuse and undermine enemy morale. The headquarters of radar, RAF Group 60, also came to Leighton Buzzard to be hidden from German attack and to be close to the telephone and radio communications needed to run its vast chain of radar stations. These directed the defending fighters that saved the country in the Battle of Britain and then took the bombing war to Germany. Close by, for the same reasons of secrecy and safety, were the satellite stations of Bletchley Park, the now famous code-breaking centre; the Met Office at Dunstable, which gave the all clear for the D-Day landings; Black Ops units that set up false radio stations and wrote propaganda to confuse the enemy; and airfields used for dropping agents behind enemy lines. At Q Central itself was the largest telephone exchange in the world, with more than 1,000 teleprinters communicating with all the armed services in every theatre of war and directing the operations of the secret services. Now the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act have been lifted, enabling eight members of the Leighton Buzzard and District Archaeology and History Society to piece together this compelling story for the first time.

The 25 Most Influential Aircraft of All Time conveys the fascinating progression of flying technology from flimsy wood-and-fabric biplanes to thunderous supersonic wonders. Aviation's most historically relevant and arguably most influential aircraft - planes like the elliptical-winged Spitfire, the blisteringly-fast X-15, and the ubiquitous Learjet - are dramatically showcased in individual chapters. Factors like performance, price, operational efficiency, and perceptions in popular culture are examined. People are just as important as hardware in the discussion of the world's greatest aircraft. The larger-than-life characters who designed and built these aeronautical marvels - men like the reclusive Howard Hughes and the demanding Clarence "Kelly" Johnson - are an indispensable part of the story. So, too, are the fearless pilots like Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager who gave life to the shining examples of a new and dynamic industry. The authors have flown or flown in many of the featured aircraft and they knew many of the luminous personalities involved, enabling them to share unique perspectives. The preface is written by William Lloyd Stearman, a former staff member of the National Security Council and the son of famed industry engineer Lloyd Stearman. The introduction is written by Norman R. Augustine, the retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation. The foreword is written by Burt Rutan, the renowned aircraft designer and founder of Scaled Composites. Each aircraft is magnificently illustrated in color, mostly with paintings by leading aviation artists.