Air forces and warfare

During World War II, an eccentric band of barnstormers, stunt flyers and commercial pilots joined military recruits to form the Pan American Air Ferries.

At the outbreak of World War I, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, military commander of Germany's East African Colony, planned to divert British troops from Europe to East Africa.

Over the past eight decades, developments in vertical lift aircraft--both helicopters and vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) planes--have given the American military unparalleled capabilities on the modern battlefield.

In Europe, World War II was four months old by Christmas 1939.

For three years, Staff Sergeant Charles M.

As a 26-year old Marine radar intercept officer (RIO), Fleet Lentz flew 131 combat missions in the back seat of the supersonic F-4 B Phantom II during the wind-down of the Vietnam War.

While the United States sought to remain neutral in the early years of World War II, some Americans did not.

The C-124 Globemaster--a U.

Takeo Yoshikawa (1912-1993) was an ensign in the Imperial Japanese Navy and a naval intelligence officer assigned the task of spying on the U.

West Point graduates played a central role in developing U.

World War I is regarded as the first modern war, driven by fearful new technologies of mechanized combat.

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Robert Lovett grew up in Texas, went to Yale, and earned his wings as a naval air force hero in World War I.

Marie Marvingt (1875-1963) set the world's first women's aviation records, won the only gold medal for outstanding performance in all sports, invented the airplane ambulance, was the first female bomber pilot in history, fought in World War I disguised as a man, took part in the Resistance of World War II, was the first to survive crossing the English Channel in a balloon, worked all her life as a journalist, spent years in North Africa and invented metal skis.

Born into one of 19th century Europe's more powerful families, Archduchess Marie Valerie was the favorite daughter of Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth.

James Claude Beasley was a typical American teenager in the 1940s--a child of the Great Depression with an abiding commitment to family and country.

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The Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police) was the political police force of the German Army during World War II.

Mid-flight noncombat mishaps and blunders occur frequently in the USAF during training and utility flights--sometimes with the loss of life and regularly with the destruction of expensive aircraft.

In the five months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy won a string of victories in a campaign to consolidate control of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

Charles Sweeny (1882-1963) was the heir to a fortune.

Winston Churchill, indispensable when liberty was in peril, died in 1965.

This first ever biography of Antarctic explorer Sir Raymond Priestley (1886-1974) covers his full (at times life-threatening) involvement with Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1907-1909 Nimrod Expedition and Robert Scott's 1910-1913 Terra Nova Expedition.

Originally designed as a cargo and paratroop transport during World War II, the Fairchild C-82 Packet is today mainly remembered for its starring role in the Hollywood film The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).

The U.

In late January 1944 a force of New Zealand soldiers and Allied specialists undertook a daring behind the lines reconnaissance of the Japanese-held Green Islands of Papua New Guinea.

Through both World Wars, young African conscripts from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, the Congo and elsewhere found themselves fighting for their colonial rulers, facing unknown enemies in unknown lands.

In the opening days of World War II, a joint U.

Originally constructed in the 18th century as a military barracks by Austrian Emperor Joseph II, Theresienstadt (now Terezin) was used as a ghetto and concentration camp by the Nazis early in World War II in their ruse of peaceful resettlement of the Jews of Europe.

More than 150,000 American Jews served in the air war during World War II.

Though few realize it, the Netherlands East Indies were the object of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Lieutenant John Huddleston Taber was a New Yorker assigned to the 168th "e;Third Iowa"e; Infantry Regiment of the American Expeditionary Force's 42nd "e;Rainbow"e; Division during World War I.

On July 3, 1940, 5,000 exhausted and hungry French officers reached a high plateau of the Moravian Mountain range in Austria.

The 92nd Infantry ("e;Buffalo"e;) Division was the last segregated (all-black) U.

Creating a guerrilla movement to fight the Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1942-1945) presented Colonel Wendell Fertig with some formidable challenges.

One of NASCAR's pioneers, Bud Moore won countless races in the sport's early rough and tumble days.

The story of Hitler's Wehrmachtsgefolge (armed forces auxiliaries) is less well known than that of Germany's other armed forces in World War II, such as the panzer divisions, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine.

One of the central events of modern history, World War I has been poorly presented in English language films.

World War II began for the United States with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, followed by the invasion of the Philippine Islands the next day.

Seventy years after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan is still dealing with the effects of the bombings on the national psyche.

On a sunny Fourth of July during World War I, King George V went out to a ball game.

The life and achievements of General Omar Nelson Bradley are legendary.

In April 1917, Congress approved President Woodrow Wilson's request to declare war on the Central Powers, thrusting the United States into World War I with the rallying cry, "e;The world must be made safe for democracy.

"e;Now that the United States has declared war upon the German Empire, and that men will more than likely be conscripted into the service, I shall feel embarrassed should I fail to be among the first to go to the training camp,"e; wrote Dae Hinson of Leesville, Louisiana, in April 1917.

North Carolina did more than its part during World War II.

During World War II, the Solomon Islands became the scene of a titanic struggle between Allied and Japanese forces.

In 1945 U.

The Allies' triumphant march into Paris in 1944 was met with cheering crowds of liberated Parisians.

World War II could not have been won without the U.

For two weeks during the spring of 1942, the Bataan Death March--one of the most widely condemned atrocities of World War II--unfolded.