Since its initial construction as a British overseas training base on February 6, 1942, Holloman Air Force Base has been at the forefront of cutting-edge technology for national defense. Throughout the last 70 years, Holloman has been known to "push the envelope" in regards to training, research, and military operations. Some of the amazing accomplishments performed at Holloman include the "Fastest Man Alive," Col. John P. Stapp's record-setting runs down the rocket test track; the "Highest Step in the World," taken by Capt. Joseph Kittinger at 102,800 feet over the New Mexico desert, and training for the first chimpanzee in space, Ham, in preparation for manned spaceflight. The isolated desert base would also become identified with the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, made famous during the opening hours of Operation Desert Storm.

Contains pictures of the base and portraits of those who worked there.

Winner of the Western History Association’s Robert G. Athearn Award for outstanding book on the twentieth-century American West Just before dawn on July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated at Trinity Site in an isolated stretch of the central New Mexico desert. It may have been the single most important event of the twentieth century. The Day the Sun Rose Twice tells the fascinating story of the events leading up to this first test explosion, the characters and roles of the people involved, and the aftermath of the bomb’s successful demonstration. With J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” at last getting his Hollywood close-up in Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster film Oppenheimer, readers can discover the background behind the world’s first atomic blast in Ferenc Morton Szasz’s award-winning history. “Tightly focused, lucidly written, and thoroughly researched,” according to the New York Times Book Review, the book provides “a valuable introduction to how our nuclear dilemma began.”

Kittinger, joined by author Craig Ryan, documents the heights of his extraordinary aeronautical career.

In February 1999, only a few weeks before the U.S. Air Force spearheaded NATO's Allied Force air campaign against Serbia, Col. C.R. Anderegg, USAF (Ret.), visited the commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe. Colonel Anderegg had known Gen. John Jumper since they had served together as jet forward air controllers in Southeast Asia nearly thirty years earlier. From the vantage point of 1999, they looked back to the day in February 1970, when they first controlled a laser-guided bomb strike. In this book Anderegg takes us from "glimmers of hope" like that one through other major improvements in the Air Force that came between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. Always central in Anderegg's account of those changes are the people who made them. This is a very personal book by an officer who participated in the transformation he describes so vividly. Much of his story revolves around the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB), Nevada, where he served two tours as an instructor pilot specializing in guided munitions.

The untold story of an eccentric, scientific visionary whose death-defying research has saved millions of lives. Sixty years ago, cars and airplanes were still deathtraps waiting to happen. Today, both are safer than ever, thanks in part to one pioneering air force doctor’s research on seatbelts and ejection seats. The exploits of John Paul Stapp (1910–1999) come to thrilling life in this biography of a Renaissance man who was once blasted—faster than a .45 caliber bullet—across the desert in his Sonic Wind rocket sled, only to be slammed to a stop in barely a second. The experiment put him on the cover of Time magazine and allowed his swashbuckling team to gather the data needed to revolutionize automobile and aircraft design. But Stapp didn’t stop there. From the legendary high-altitude balloon tests that ensued to the ferocious battles for car safety legislation, Craig Ryan’s book is as much a history of America’s transition into the Jet Age as it is a biography of the man who got us there safely.

The Nintendo generation has taken to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan where remotely controlled aircraft are killing America1s enemies and saving American lives.Matt J. Martin is considered a "top gun" in the world of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). For nearly four years, he has flown hundreds of missions on two warfronts in a new kind of combat that, until recently, was largely classified Top Secret. He and his fellow Predator pilots have been actively involved in virtually every facet of the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan: tracking Osama bin Laden; capturing top al-Qaeda leader al-Zarqawi; fighting with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah; and rescuing aid workers kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Taliban.This is Matt J. Martin's story and that of his aircraft, the 27-foot long Predator.

Since its initial construction as a British overseas training base on February 6, 1942, Holloman Air Force Base has been at the forefront of cutting-edge technology for national defense. Throughout the last 70 years, Holloman has been known to "push the envelope" in regards to training, research, and military operations. Some of the amazing accomplishments performed at Holloman include the "Fastest Man Alive," Col. John P. Stapp's record-setting runs down the rocket test track; the "Highest Step in the World," taken by Capt. Joseph Kittinger at 102,800 feet over the New Mexico desert, and training for the first chimpanzee in space, Ham, in preparation for manned spaceflight. The isolated desert base would also become identified with the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, made famous during the opening hours of Operation Desert Storm.