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Valor is the magnificent story of a genuine American hero who
survived the fall of the Philippines and brutal captivity under the
Japanese, from New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton.
Lieutenant William Frederick "Bill" Harris was 25 years old when
captured by Japanese forces during the Battle of Corregidor in May
1942. This son of a decorated Marine general escaped from hell on
earth by swimming eight hours through a shark-infested bay; but his
harrowing ordeal had just begun. Shipwrecked on the southern coast
of the Philippines, he was sheltered by a Filipino aristocrat,
engaged in guerilla fighting, and eventually set off through
hostile waters to China. After 29 days of misadventures and violent
storms, Harris and his crew limped into a friendly fishing village
in the southern Philippines. Evading and fighting for months, he
embarked on another agonizing voyage to Australia, but was betrayed
by treacherous islanders and handed over to the Japanese. Held for
two years in the notorious Ofuna prisoner-of-war camp outside
Yokohama, Harris was continuously starved, tortured, and beaten,
but he never surrendered. Teaching himself Japanese, he
eavesdropped on the guards and created secret codes to communicate
with fellow prisoners. After liberation on August 30, 1945, Bill
represented American Marine POWs during the Japanese surrender in
Tokyo Bay before joining his father and flying to a home he had not
seen in four years. Valor is a riveting new look at the Pacific
War. Through military documents, personal photos, and an
unpublished memoir provided by his daughter, Harris' experiences
are dramatically revealed through his own words in the expert hands
of bestselling author and retired fighter pilot Dan Hampton. This
is the stunning and captivating true story of an American hero.
"A GRIPPING CLASSIC. Exhaustively researched, The Hunter Killers
puts you directly into a Wild Weasel fighter cockpit during the
Vietnam War. Dan Hampton lets you feel it for yourself as no one
else could."--Colonel LEO THORSNESS, Wild Weasel pilot and Medal of
Honor recipient At the height of the Cold War, America's most elite
aviators bravely volunteered for a covert program aimed at
eliminating an impossible new threat. Half never returned. All
became legends. From New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton
comes one of the most extraordinary untold stories of aviation
history. Vietnam, 1965: On July 24 a USAF F-4 Phantom jet was
suddenly blown from the sky by a mysterious and lethal weapon-a
Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM), launched by Russian
"advisors" to North Vietnam. Three days later, six F-105
Thunderchiefs were brought down trying to avenge the Phantom. More
tragic losses followed, establishing the enemy's SAMs as the
deadliest anti-aircraft threat in history and dramatically turning
the tables of Cold War air superiority in favor of Soviet
technology. Stunned and desperately searching for answers, the
Pentagon ordered a top secret program called Wild Weasel I to
counter the SAM problem-fast. So it came to be that a small group
of maverick fighter pilots and Electronic Warfare Officers
volunteered to fly behind enemy lines and into the teeth of the
threat. To most it seemed a suicide mission-but they beat the door
down to join. Those who survived the 50 percent casualty rate would
revolutionize warfare forever. "You gotta be sh*#@ing me!" This
immortal phrase was uttered by Captain Jack Donovan when the Wild
Weasel concept was first explained to him. "You want me to fly in
the back of a little tiny fighter aircraft with a crazy fighter
pilot who thinks he's invincible, home in on a SAM site in North
Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me?" Based on unprecedented
firsthand interviews with Wild Weasel veterans and previously
unseen personal papers and declassified documents from both sides
of the conflict, as well as Dan Hampton's own experience as a
highly decorated F-16 Wild Weasel pilot, The Hunter Killers is a
gripping, cockpit-level chronicle of the first-generation Weasels,
the remarkable band of aviators who faced head-on the advanced
Soviet missile technology that was decimating fellow American
pilots over the skies of Vietnam.
The New York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot and retired
USAF F-16 legend Dan Hampton offers the first comprehensive popular
history of combat aviation-a unique, entertaining, and
action-packed look at the aces of the air and their machines, from
the trailblazing aviators of World War I to today's technologically
expert warriors flying supersonic jets. One of the most decorated
fighter pilots in history, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.)
Dan Hampton goes back 100 years to tell the extraordinary stories
of the most famous fighter planes and the brave and daring heroes
who made them legend. Told in his acclaimed high-octane style,
Lords of the Sky is a fresh and exhilarating look at the
development of aviation for history and military buffs alike.
"Operation Vengeance is colorful, intimate, eye-popping history,
delivered at a breakneck pace. I loved it." -Lynn Vincent The New
York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot delivers an
electrifying narrative account of the top-secret U.S. mission to
kill Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese commander who masterminded
Pearl Harbor. In 1943, the United States military began to plan one
of the most dramatic secret missions of World War II. Its code name
was Operation Vengeance. Naval Intelligence had intercepted the
itinerary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of
the Japanese Combined Fleet, whose stealth attack on Pearl Harbor
precipitated America's entry into the war. Harvard-educated,
Yamamoto was a close confidant of Emperor Hirohito and a brilliant
tactician who epitomized Japanese military might. On April 18th,
the U.S. discovered, he would travel to Rabaul in the South Pacific
to visit Japanese troops, then fly to the Japanese airfield at
Balalale, 400 miles to the southeast. Set into motion, the
Americans' plan was one of the most tactically difficult operations
of the war. To avoid detection, U.S. pilots had to embark on a
circuitous, 1,000-mile odyssey that would test not only their
skills but the physical integrity of their planes. The timing was
also crucial: the slightest miscalculation, even by a few
minutes-or a delay on the famously punctual Yamamoto's end-meant
the entire plan would collapse, endangering American lives. But if
these remarkable pilots succeeded, they could help turn the tide of
the war-and greatly boost Allied morale. Informed by deep archival
research and his experience as a decorated combat pilot, Operation
Vengeance focuses on the mission's pilots and recreates the
moment-by-moment drama they experienced in the air. Hampton
recreates this epic event in thrilling detail, and provides
groundbreaking evidence about what really happened that day.
Operation Vengeance includes 30 black-and-white images.
"Viper Pilot" is the high-octane memoir of one of America's elite
aviators: a twenty-year battle-seasoned pilot who flew 151 combat
missions in the world's most iconic fighter plane - the F-16
Fighting Falcon - the Viper as its pilots call it. A fighter pilot
who came of age at the end of the Cold War, Dan Hampton was one of
the flyers scrambled into the skies on 9/11. With the onset of the
Iraq War, he saw extensive action and was one of the Wild Weasels,
a select cadre of highly trained, innovative, and gutsy fighters
who flew into hostile territory first to draw enemy fire-revealing
the positions of their antiaircraft weaponry for our forces to
destroy. For his actions Hampton received an extraordinary three
Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor and a Purple Heart. As a
young flyer a decade earlier, he flew combat sorties in the first
Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict. Hampton takes readers into
rarefied air: the closed world of fighter pilots and modern air
combat, offering a fascinating look into the mind and making of
those elite few who have "the right stuff." He recounts gripping
stories of saving American soldiers on the ground from certain
death, of evading heat-seeking missiles that were locked on his
tail, and of being wounded in an enemy's air strike on his base. He
also reveals what it takes both mentally and physically to become
the best of the best. A thrilling true story of courage and
commitment rife with excitement, danger, and glory, "Viper Pilot"
is one remarkable man's tale of what's like to be a true hero of
the skies.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * At the end of World War II, a band of aces
gathered in the Mojave Desert on a Top Secret quest to break the
sound barrier-nicknamed "The Demon" by pilots. The true story of
what happened in those skies has never been told. Speed. In 1947,
it represented the difference between victory and annihilation.
After Hiroshima, the ability to deliver a nuclear device to its
target faster than one's enemy became the singular obsession of
American war planners. And so, in the earliest days of the Cold
War, a highly classified program was conducted on a desolate air
base in California's Mojave Desert. Its aim: to push the envelope
of flight to new frontiers. There gathered an extraordinary band of
pilots, including Second World War aces Chuck Yeager and George
Welch, who risked their lives flying experimental aircraft to reach
Mach 1, the so-called sound barrier, which pilots called "the
demon." Shrouding the program in secrecy, the US military
reluctantly revealed that the "barrier" had been broken two months
later, after the story was leaked to the press. The full truth has
never been fully revealed-until now. Chasing the Demon, from
decorated fighter pilot and acclaimed aviation historian Dan
Hampton, tells, for the first time, the extraordinary true story of
mankind's quest for Mach 1. Here, of course, is
twenty-four-year-old Captain Chuck Yeager, who made history flying
the futuristic Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound on October
14, 1947. Officially Yeager was the first to achieve supersonic
flight, but drawing on new interviews with survivors of the
program, including Yeager's former commander, as well as
declassified files, Hampton presents evidence that a fellow
American-George Welch, a daring fighter pilot who shot down a
remarkable sixteen enemy aircraft during the Pacific War-met the
demon first, though he was not favored to wear the laurels, as he
was now a civilian test pilot and was not flying the Bell X-1.
Chasing the Demon sets the race between Yeager and Welch in the
context of aviation history, so that the reader can learn and
appreciate their accomplishments as never before.
"GRIPPING. ... AN HOUR-BY-HOUR ACCOUNT." - WALL STREET JOURNAL *
From one of the most decorated pilots in Air Force history comes a
masterful account of Lindbergh's death-defying nonstop
transatlantic flight in Spirit of St. Louis On the rainy morning of
May 20, 1927, a little-known American pilot named Charles A.
Lindbergh climbed into his single-engine monoplane, Spirit of St.
Louis, and prepared to take off from a small airfield on Long
Island, New York. Despite his inexperience-the twenty-five-year-old
Lindbergh had never before flown over open water-he was determined
to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize promised since 1919 to the first
pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris, a terrifying
adventure that had already claimed six men's lives. Ahead of him
lay a 3,600-mile solo journey across the vast north Atlantic and
into the unknown; his survival rested on his skill, courage, and an
unassuming little aircraft with no front window. Only 500 people
showed up to see him off. Thirty-three and a half hours later, a
crowd of more than 100,000 mobbed Spirit as the audacious young
American touched down in Paris, having acheived the seemingly
impossible. Overnight, as he navigated by the stars through storms
across the featureless ocean, news of his attempt had circled the
globe, making him an international celebrity by the time he reached
Europe. He returned to the United States a national hero, feted
with ticker-tape parades that drew millions, bestowed every
possible award from the Medal of Honor to Time's "Man of the Year"
(the first to be so named), commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp
within months, and celebrated as the embodiment of the twentieth
century and America's place in it. Acclaimed aviation historian Dan
Hampton's The Flight is a long-overdue, flyer's-eye narrative of
Lindbergh's legendary journey. A decorated fighter pilot who flew
more than 150 combat missions in an F-16 and made numerous
transatlantic crossings, Hampton draws on his unique perspective to
bring alive the danger, uncertainty, and heroic accomplishment of
Lindbergh's crossing. Hampton's deeply researched telling also
incorporates a trove of primary sources, including Lindbergh's own
personal diary and writings, as well as family letters and untapped
aviation archives that fill out this legendary story as never
before.
At the height of the Cold War, America's most elite aviators
bravely volunteered for a covert program aimed at eliminating an
impossible new threat. Half never returned. All became legends.
From New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton comes one of the
most extraordinary untold stories of aviation history.Vietnam,
1965: On July 24 a USAF F-4 Phantom jet was suddenly blown from the
sky by a mysterious and lethal weapon--a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air
missile (SAM), launched by Russian "advisors" to North Vietnam.
Three days later, six F-105 Thunderchiefs were brought down trying
to avenge the Phantom. More tragic losses followed, establishing
the enemy's SAMs as the deadliest anti-aircraft threat in history
and dramatically turning the tables of Cold War air superiority in
favor of Soviet technology.Stunned and desperately searching for
answers, the Pentagon ordered a top secret program called Wild
Weasel I to counter the SAM problem--fast. So it came to be that a
small group of maverick fighter pilots and Electronic Warfare
Officers volunteered to fly behind enemy lines and into the teeth
of the threat. To most it seemed a suicide mission--but they beat
the door down to join. Those who survived the 50 percent casualty
rate would revolutionize warfare forever."You gotta be sh*#@ing
me!" This immortal phrase was uttered by Captain Jack Donovan when
the Wild Weasel concept was first explained to him. "You want me to
fly in the back of a little tiny fighter aircraft with a crazy
fighter pilot who thinks he's invincible, home in on a SAM site in
North Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me?"Based on
unprecedented firsthand interviews with Wild Weasel veterans and
previously unseen personal papers and declassified documents from
both sides of the conflict, as well as Dan Hampton's own experience
as a highly decorated F-16 Wild Weasel pilot, The Hunter Killers is
a gripping, cockpit-level chronicle of the first-generation
Weasels, the remarkable band of aviators who faced head-on the
advanced Soviet missile technology that was decimating fellow
American pilots over the skies of Vietnam.
This history of Auburn Rubber toys is from the early 1950s until
the company went out of business in 1968. It mostly covers the
vinyl toys that were very popular during the 50s and 60s. It covers
a variety of toys and products that the Auburn Rubber Company
produced and sold by the millions.
"GRIPPING. ... AN HOUR-BY-HOUR ACCOUNT." -- WALL STREET JOURNAL -
From one of the most decorated pilots in Air Force history comes a
masterful account of Lindbergh's death-defying nonstop
transatlantic flight in Spirit of St. Louis On the rainy morning of
May 20, 1927, a little-known American pilot named Charles A.
Lindbergh climbed into his single-engine monoplane, Spirit of St.
Louis, and prepared to take off from a small airfield on Long
Island, New York. Despite his inexperience--the
twenty-five-year-old Lindbergh had never before flown over open
water--he was determined to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize promised
since 1919 to the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and
Paris, a terrifying adventure that had already claimed six men's
lives. Ahead of him lay a 3,600-mile solo journey across the vast
north Atlantic and into the unknown; his survival rested on his
skill, courage, and an unassuming little aircraft with no front
window. Only 500 people showed up to see him off. Thirty-three and
a half hours later, a crowd of more than 100,000 mobbed Spirit as
the audacious young American touched down in Paris, having acheived
the seemingly impossible. Overnight, as he navigated by the stars
through storms across the featureless ocean, news of his attempt
had circled the globe, making him an international celebrity by the
time he reached Europe. He returned to the United States a national
hero, feted with ticker-tape parades that drew millions, bestowed
every possible award from the Medal of Honor to Time's "Man of the
Year" (the first to be so named), commemorated on a U.S. postage
stamp within months, and celebrated as the embodiment of the
twentieth century and America's place in it. Acclaimed aviation
historian Dan Hampton's The Flight is a long-overdue, flyer's-eye
narrative of Lindbergh's legendary journey. A decorated fighter
pilot who flew more than 150 combat missions in an F-16 and made
numerous transatlantic crossings, Hampton draws on his unique
perspective to bring alive the danger, uncertainty, and heroic
accomplishment of Lindbergh's crossing. Hampton's deeply researched
telling also incorporates a trove of primary sources, including
Lindbergh's own personal diary and writings, as well as family
letters and untapped aviation archives that fill out this legendary
story as never before.
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