November 1943—May 1945—The U.S. Army Air Forces waged an unprecedentedly dogged and violent campaign against Hitler’s vital oil production and industrial plants on the Third Reich’s southern flank. Flying from southern Italy, far from the limelight enjoyed by the Eighth Air Force in England, the Fifteenth Air Force engaged in high-risk missions spanning most of the European continent. The story of the Fifteenth Air Force deserves a prideful place in the annals of American gallantry. In his new book, Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine, Tillman brings into focus a seldom-seen multinational cast of characters, including pilots from Axis nations Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria and many more remarkable individuals. They were the first generation of fliers—few of them professionals—to conduct a strategic bombing campaign against a major industrial nation. They suffered steady attrition and occasionally spectacular losses. In so doing, they contributed to the end of the most destructive war in history. Forgotten Fifteenth is the first-ever detailed account of the Fifteenth Air Force in World War II and the brave men that the history books have abandoned until now. Tillman proves this book is a must-read for military history enthusiasts, veterans, and current servicemen.

In Fifteenth Air Force against the Axis: Combat Missions over Europe during World War II, historian Kevin A. Mahoney provides a detailed combat history of the crucial role played by this air force from November 1943 through May 1945. Presented by month in chronological order, Mahoney describes all the major bombing and fighter missions carried out by this air force within a strategic context. Each chapter includes an introduction describing developments in the evolution of the strategic air campaign against the Germans, highlights the purpose and importance of the month’s operations, and reviews the Luftwaffe’s resistance and changes in tactics and important developments in the Fifteenth Air Force’s organization. Each monthly narrative further explores most missions, detailing the number of aircraft lost during these missions. Losses are based on an exhaustively researched database compiled by Mahoney that contains details of almost 3,000 aircraft. Target damage is mentioned, while enemy opposition is also described for each mission. Appendices include four short essays on bombing operations (planning and flying of missions, tactics and techniques, bomb types, and bombing accuracy), tactics employed by fighter escort in aerial combat and strafing, combat crews and their aircraft (including a comparison of American fighters and bombers, the training of the crews, and their combat tours), and the Fifteenth Air Force command structure (including the use of intelligence, photo and weather reconnaissance, and the considerable effect of weather on Fifteenth Air Force operations). This work of military history is ideal for students and scholars of the air war in Europe.

"From a battered old trunk in the basement, to the crumpled scrapbook in the bookcase, to an aging envelope in an unused jewelry box, they marched to the pages of this book to join the chorus to remember. Telegrams, letters, taped interviews and voices from decades ago joined in to provide a chilling description of World War II. "Red" was a Red Cross lady, her brother lost in the confusion of war. Some were courageous soldiers, others became prominent heroes. The author weaves common lives and historic events into an emotional explanation of what war was like for everyday Americans." By Colonel Ronald Losee, US Marines (Ret.) Retired Marine Colonel Ron Losee is a graduate of the University of Illinois, School of Journalism. His 31-year career took him to the Far East, from Korea to South Vietnam and many places in between. Later, as a Marine Reservist, when on vacation found him as a newspaper city editor. "I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! This is a story about typical American families and their neighborhood friends during WWII. It brings a different perspective of not only the war front, but stateside life during the war." By Colonel Tony Baggiano, USAF (Ret.) He served 20 years in the United States Air Force and his last Air Force assignment was the Commander of the San Antonio Data Services. He was awarded numerous medals which included Vietnam Service Medal with four bronze stars. The best way to teach history is to tell a story and that's what this book does. This is not your normal war book as it tells a story about friends and neighbors fighting in WWII and their families at home. It tells a different story about the "War to End all Wars". By Lieutenant Colonel James O'Donnell, USA (Ret.) Infantry combat commander from Company to Battalion and to Army level and a Distinguished member of the 16th Infantry Regiment. This memoir is a collection of WWII narratives about five heroic people whose wartime stories are connected. From Richmond, Virginia are Harriet Vaden, her brother Pfc. Herbert "Herbie" Vaden Jr., 1st Lt. Jimmie Monteith, and 1st Lt. Richard "Dick" Williams; and from Emmons, Minnesota, TSgt. Donald Singlestad. Herbie and Donald end up in the 5th Army fighting in Italy during the invasion of Salerno and many battles afterwards. Donald Singlestad later became the most decorated soldier of the 34th Infantry Division. Harriet joins the Red Cross after her younger brother Herbie enlisted, and she is assigned to the 454th Bomb Group in San Giovanni and Cerignola, Italy. When Herbie becomes MIA and severely wounded, Harriet travels across war-torn Italy to find him. Meanwhile, Richard Williams, a friend of the Vadens, was a bombardier with the 454th Bomb Group and becomes a prisoner of war in Romania. Included are the stories of Jimmy Monteith, a neighbor of the Vadens in Richmond, who is assigned to the 16th Infantry of the 7th Army and earns the Medal of Honor during the Normandy invasion. Family photographs, V-mails, and other memorabilia help tell the story of these incredible heroes as they face the perils of war. The wartime experiences affected each of them in many ways, both good and bad. As they survived each experience, their reasons for serving changed in many ways; and when they returned home, they had to re-build their lives physically and emotionally if they were to achieve happy lives again. Their stories mostly in their own words are long overdue.

In an age when football clubs name 18-player squads on each and every match day, Bury's achievement in winning promotion from Division Four in the 1984/85 season, using only 15 players throughout its entirety, will likely never be repeated. British football lay squarely in the doldrums in the middle of the 1980s. Hooliganism was the scourge of the game and crumbling, archaic grounds were a million miles from the gleaming stadia of today. Bury fan James Bentley knew that ex-England international Martin Dobson led the squad, but he didn't know anything about the team and how they succeeded against the odds. He set out to find them and to tell their story, against the backdrop of Britain in 1984 and 1985. This is the result.

In 1944 and 1945, Tom Faulkner was a B-24 pilot flying out of San Giovanni airfield in Italy as a member of the 15th Air Force of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Only 19 years old when he completed his 28th and last mission, Tom was one of the youngest bomber pilots to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. Between September 1944 and the end of February 1945, he flew against targets in Hungary, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia. On Tom’s last mission against the marshalling yards at Augsburg, Germany, his plane was severely damaged, and he had to fly to Switzerland where he and his crew were interned. The 15th Air Force generally has been overshadowed by works on the 8th Air Force based in England. Faulkner’s memoir helps fill an important void by providing a first-hand account of a pilot and his crew during the waning months of the war, as well as a description of his experiences before his military service. David L. Snead has edited the memoir and provided annotations and corroboration for the various missions.

Known by mobsters as “the man who couldn’t be bought,” Brendan Byrne led New Jersey into a new era when he won the state’s gubernatorial election by a landslide in the wake of political corruption scandals. A former prosecutor and judge, Byrne was soon condemned as “one-term Byrne,” the inept politician who few thought would risk the humiliation of standing for a second term. Yet Byrne surprised both friend and foe alike by pulling off the state’s most remarkable political comeback, winning re-election and leaving a legacy of preserving the vast resources of the Pinelands, enacting the state’s first income tax and comprehensive school financing reform, developing the Meadowlands, approving casino gambling in Atlantic City, and initiating strong environmental controls to combat pollution.

Jones offers insight into the digital debate over data ownership, permanence and policy by breaking down the argument over the controversial right to be forgotten--which would create a legal duty to delete, hide, or anonymize information at the request of another user. She provides guidance for a way forward. arguing that the existing perspectives are too limited, offering easy forgetting or none at all. By looking at new theories of privacy and organizing the many potential applications of the right, law and technology, Jones offers a set of nuanced choices. To help us choose, she provides a digital information life cycle, reflects on particular legal cultures, and analyzes international interoperability. In the end, the author claims that the right to be forgotten can be innovative, liberating, and globally viable. --Adapted from publisher description.

A brilliant, groundbreaking slice of military history, this riveting story of white-knuckled action over one of Europe’s most heavily defended targets in the waning days of World War II also tells of the aftermath of the Linz, Austria, bombing—the heart-wrenching tales of survival and recovery, and the toll of warfare on both sides. In April 1945, Linz was one of Nazi Germany’s most vital assets. It was a crucial transportation hub and communications center, with railyards brimming with war materiel destined for the front lines. Linz was also the town Hitler claimed as home and had long intended to remake as the cultural capital of Europe, filling its planned Fuehrermuseum with world-famous art stolen from his conquered territories. Inevitably, Linz was also one of the most heavily defended targets remaining in Europe. The airmen of the Fifteenth Air Force were a mix of seasoned veterans and newcomers. As their mission was unveiled in the predawn hours of April 25th, audible groans and muffled expletives passed many lips. The reality of that mission would prove more brutal than any imagined. In the unheated, unpressurized B‑24 Liberator and B‑17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers, young men battled elements as dangerous as anything the Germans could throw at them. When batteries of German anti‑aircraft guns opened fire, the men flew into a man‑made hell of exploding shrapnel. Aircraft and men fell from the sky as Austrian civilians on the ground also struggled to survive beneath the bombs during the deadly climax of Hitler’s war. Drawing on interviews with dozens of America’s last surviving World War II veterans, as well as previously unpublished sources, Mike Croissant compellingly relates one of the war’s last truly untold stories—a gripping chronicle of warfare, the death of Nazi Germany, and the beginning of the Cold War. It is also a timeless tale of courage and terror, loss and redemption, humanity and savagery.

Historians consider the Battle of Rzhev "one of the bloodiest in the history of the Great Patriotic War" and "Zhukov's greatest defeat". Veterans called this colossal battle, which continued for a total of 15 months, "the Rzhev slaughterhouse" or "the Massacre", while the German generals named this city "the cornerstone of the Eastern Front" and "the gateway to Berlin". By their territorial scale, number of participating troops, length and casualties, the military operations in the area of the Rzhev - Viaz'ma salient are not only comparable to the Stalingrad battle, but to a great extent surpass it. The total losses of the Red Army around Rzhev amounted to 2,000,000 men; the Wehrmacht's total losses are still unknown precisely to the present day. Why was one of the greatest battles of the Second World War consigned to oblivion in the Soviet Union? Why were the forces of the German Army Group Center in the Rzhev - Viaz'ma salient not encircled and destroyed? Whose fault is it that the German forces were able to withdraw from a pocket that was never fully sealed? Indeed, are there justifications for blaming this "lost victory" on G.K. Zhukov? In this book, which has been recognized in Russia as one of the best domestic studies of the Rzhev battle, answers to all these questions have been given. The author, Svetlana Gerasimova, has lived and worked amidst the still extant signs of this colossal battle, the tens of thousands of unmarked graves and the now silent bunkers and pillboxes, and has dedicated herself to the study of its history. Svetlana Aleksandrovna Gerasimova is a historian and museum official. After graduating from Leningrad State University with a history degree, she worked in the Urals as a middle school history teacher, before moving to Tver, where she taught a number of courses in history and local history, and about museum work and leading excursions in the Tver' School of Culture. She earned her Ph.D. in history from Tver State University in 2002. For more than 20 years, S.A. Gerasimova has been working in the Tver' State Consolidated Museum, and is the creator and co-creator of a many displays and exhibits in the branches of the Museum, and in municipal and institutional museums of the Tver' Oblast. Recent museum exhibits that she has created include "The Battle of Rzhev 1942-1943" and "The Fatal Forties … Toropets District in the Years of the Great Patriotic War." She has led approximately 20 historical and folklore-ethnographic expeditions in the area of Tver' Oblast and is the author of numerous articles in such journals as Voprosy istorii [Questions of History], Voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv [Military History Archive], Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal [Journal of Military History] and Zhivaia starina [The Living Past], and of other publications. In 2009, she served as a featured consultant to a Russian NTV television documentary about the Battle of Rzhev, which quickly became controversial for its very frank discussion of the campaign. Stuart Britton is a freelance translator and editor residing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He has been responsible for making a growing number of Russian titles available to readers of the English language, consisting primarily of memoirs by Red Army veterans and recent historical research concerning the Eastern Front of the Second World War and Soviet air operations in the Korean War. Notable recent titles include Valeriy Zamulin's award-winning 'Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative ' (Helion, 2011), Boris Gorbachevsky's 'Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front 1942-45' (University Press of Kansas, 2008) and Yuri Sutiagin's and Igor Seidov's 'MiG Menace Over Korea: The Story of Soviet Fighter Ace Nikolai Sutiagin' (Pen & Sword Aviation, 2009). Future books will include Svetlana Gerasimova's analysis of the prolonged and savage fighting against Army Group Center in 1942-43 to liberate the city of Rzhev, and more of Igor Seidov's studies of the Soviet side of the air war in Korea, 1951-1953.