Showing titles in World War II

In this engaging audiobook, we see how an 18-year-old miner shoveling ore from deep in the ground in Utah suddenly found himself, only two years later, 30,000 feet in the air over Nazi Germany, piloting a Flying Fortress in the first wave of America's air counteroffensive in Europe. Pathfinder Pioneer gives us vivid insights into the genesis of the American air campaign, told with the humor, attention to detail, and humility that captures the heart and soul of our Greatest Generation.

On August 9, 1945, on the tiny island of Tinian in the South Pacific, a 25-year-old American Army Air Corps major named Charles W. Sweeney climbed aboard a B-29 Superfortress in command of his first combat mission, one devised specifically to bring a long and terrible war to a necessary conclusion.... The last military officer to command an atomic mission, Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney has the unique distinction of having been an integral part of both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombing runs.

Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber's book, the listener discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries.

“A fast-paced, well-researched…irresistible” (USA TODAY) World War II aviation account of friendship, heroism, and sacrifice that reads like Unbroken meets The Dirty Dozen from the authors of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Heart of Everything That Is. It’s 1942, just after the...

Delivery Man: The Enemy-Alien Nisei Translator Who Saved His Battalion is the suspenseful, tragic, and true story of a combat translator in a pioneering American special operations force, sent into the heart of a forgotten jungle war in which he fought soldiers of his own ancestry and put his life on the line to save hundreds of his brothers.

On the 8th June 1940, the Nazi battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau opened their guns on the aircraft-carrier HMS Glorious. Within minutes, the Glorious was taking on water, and the order was given to abandon ship. Only 40 men survived this ordeal, one of which was Royal Marine Ronald "Tubby" Healiss, who served as a member of a 4.7 gun crew on the Glorious. His award-winning account is a true and terrible record of suffering, which uncovers one of the greatest undocumented naval stories of the Second World War.

The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII. His name wasn’t Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of...

Of all the celebrities who served their country during World War II - and they were legion - Jimmy Stewart was unique. On December 7, when the attack on Pearl Harbor woke so many others to the reality of war, Stewart was already in uniform - as a private on guard duty south of San Francisco at the Army Air Corps Moffet Field. Seeing war on the horizon, Jimmy Stewart, at the height of his fame after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and his Oscar-winning turn in The Philadelphia Story in 1940, had enlisted several months earlier.

In this revealing insight into a little-known aspect of British wartime history, Helen Fry documents the stories of those who fought for king and adopted country. Based on interviews with veterans and drawing on a rich vein of source material, the author sets their personal stories against the bigger picture of the experience of enemy aliens in Britain during the Second World War.

The heroic accounts of Australian Army Nursing Sisters Margaret Anderson and Vera Torney who survived the perilous evacuation of Singapore in 1942. The nursing profession is one historically filled with everyday heroes; men and women engaged in challenging work that can often prove the...

John Olivey, an officer in the Long Range Desert Group, saw action in the Western Desert, where he was awarded the Military Cross; he fought in the Dodecanese, for which he was decorated a second time; and saw active service on mainland Greece, and in Istria. In autumn 1943, he was deployed to the Aegean and in October tasked with leading 'Olforce' in an ill-conceived operation to take the island of Levitha. Of some fifty LRDG, he was one of only seven to avoid capture. During the battle for Leros in November, he commanded X2 Patrol at Clidi, a key hilltop position.

The remarkable autobiography of a pioneering female aviator who left a privileged life to serve in World War II.

‘I was on a train, and a German soldier began shouting at me and poking me in the ribs with his machine gun. I just thought that was it, the game was up . . .’ Downed airman Bob Frost faced danger at every turn as he was smuggled out of France and over the Pyrenees. Prisoner of war Len...

Formed in the fall of 1943, the Fifteenth Air Force was popularly known as the "The Forgotten Fifteenth," as its achievements were overshadowed by more glamorous exploits of the Eighth Air Force in the air war over Germany. Nevertheless, the Fifteenth's contribution to Allied victory was crucial, and a vital part of that was the role played by the escorting fighter groups from the Fifteenth Fighter Command who protected the B-17s and B-24s from the Luftwaffe in the skies over Romania.

No Demon of Darkness is not a chronicle of violent clashes with the Luftwaffe's bombers over England; it is the tale of a young pilot and the challenges he faced in learning to fly, and in flying heavy fighters such as the Bristol Beaufighter and De Haviland Mosquito. It is also about setbacks and successes. Above all, it is about what it often meant to be an inexperienced operational pilot in wartime.

The story of the man who won the battle of Midway and avenged Pearl Harbor for the United States. During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, US Navy dive bomber pilot Wade McClusky proved himself to be one of the greatest pilots and combat leaders in American history, but his story has never been told - until now.

One of his biographers called him "a complex man: a born leader, a brilliant soldier, a devoted husband, a proud father; intelligent, instinctive, brave, compassionate, vain, egotistical, and arrogant." As that description suggests, every account of Erwin Rommel's life must address what appears to be its inherent contradictions.

The complete war memoirs of the resistance leader Charles de Gaulle, who led France out of its darkest hour during the Nazi occupation during World War II. “Faced with the political disaster, I had to become France.” This was how Charles de Gaulle answered the call of history. One of the few...

A hell-bent-for-leather fighter pilot, Elwyn G. Righetti remains one of the most unknown, yet compelling, colorful, and controversial commanders of World War II. Arriving late to the war, he led the England-based 55th Fighter Group against the Nazis during the closing months of the fight with a no-holds-barred aggressiveness that transformed the group from a middling organization of no reputation into a headline-grabbing team that had to make excuses to no one. Indeed, Righetti's boldness paid off as he quickly achieved ace status.

When Metcalfe boarded the C-47 which would drop him at Groesbeek Heights, just outside of Nijmegen, Holland, he was handed a box of twelve dozen condoms by an overconfident British lieutenant. He was to be among the first to jump into what should have been a picture-book meadow, free of German troops. Instead, it was defended by three German antiaircraft cannon emplacements. As he jumped into a hail of bullets and exploding shells, he watched his plane roll over and plummet into the ground.