This novel is about one young man, of Irish Catholic descent, growing up in San Francisco of emigrant Irish parents and entering WWII shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During his high school years he works, in his spare time, at the Fisherman’s wharf. He meets and falls in love with the daughter of a fishing boat skipper but one night as they are crossing the street to go to dinner at a small restaurant in the North Beach District a random bullet from China Town finds its mark in the chest of the girl he intends to build his life around and the event leaves the young man in state of anger and despair as the war breaks out. He joins the service and becomes a pilot of a B-26 medium bomber which eventually takes him to combat in Europe and his participation in the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. While recuperating from wounds and emotional exhaustion suffered from a bombing mission in France he meets and falls in love with an Irish girl. The book, itself, is a work of historical fiction but stays close to the factual history of the WWII era with special reference to the war in Europe and the part played by the Eighth U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force of Great Britain.

This is the biography of one of the Royal Navys legendary pilots. BF or Daddy as he was known, started his career at Dartmouth and then spent his early seagoing years in Hong Kong, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. His wartime experiences as a Fleet Air pilot aboard HMS Glorious included the historic air strike at Taranto and the search for the Graf Spee. In May 1940 he was loaned to Coastal Command and attacked German Panzer tanks in a biplane, defended Allied troops over Dunkirk and was one of only a few naval officers to fight in the Battle of Britain. After a period as a test pilot at Boscombe Down he became one of only four Wing Leaders in the Royal Navy. His successful leadership lead to many more successes, not least the crippling of Tirpitz as part of a diversionary plan in the lead up to D-Day.He was a superb pilot, loved by all the air and ground crew under his command. His reputation as a fearless and dynamic leader remains a legend today. The book contains detailed and graphic accounts of aerial sorties and strikes throughout the dark days over Nazi Europe. Tragically he was killed in action in July 1944, one week prior to promotion and a job ashore. The book includes many of his letters and extracts from his diary.

'A superb account of the invasion that deserves immense praise. To convey the human drama of Normandy requires great knowledge and sensitivity. Holland has both in spades' The Times Renowned World War Two historian James Holland presents an entirely new perspective on one of the most important moments in recent history, unflinchingly examining the brutality and violence that characterised the campaign. ______________ D-Day and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed have come to be seen as a defining episode in the Second World War. Its story has been endlessly retold, and yet it remains a narrative burdened by both myth and assumed knowledge. In this reexamined history, James Holland presents a broader overview, one that challenges much of what we think we know about D-Day and the Normandy campaign. The sheer size and scale of the Allies' war machine ultimately dominates the strategic, operational and tactical limitations of the German forces. This was a brutal campaign. In terms of daily casualties, the numbers were worse than for any one battle during the First World War. 'A devastating new account..Holland knows his stuff when it comes to military matters. The reader is in safe hands navigating each aspect of this complex campaign' Daily Mail, Book of the Week _________________ Drawing on unseen archives and testimonies from around the world Introducing a cast of eye-witnesses that includes foot soldiers, tank men, fighter pilots and bomber crews, sailors, civilians, resistance fighters and those directing the action An epic telling that will profoundly recalibrate our understanding of its true place in the tide of human history

Major Jack Novak has never failed to meet a challenge--until he meets army nurse Lieutenant Ruth Doherty. When Jack lands in the army hospital after a plane crash, he makes winning Ruth's heart a top priority mission. But he has his work cut out for him. Not only is Ruth focused on her work in order to support her orphaned siblings back home, she carries a shameful secret that keeps her from giving her heart to any man. Can Jack break down her defenses? Or are they destined to go their separate ways? A Memory Between Us is the second book in the WINGS OF GLORY series, which follows the three Novak brothers, B-17 bomber pilots with the US Eighth Air Force stationed in England during World War II.

In 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright opened the first US civilian flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. The Wright Brothers hoped to find a climate warmer and more hospitable to flying than their company base of snowy Dayton, Ohio, even as forward-thinking Montgomerians heralded the school as a way to rise above the shadow of the Civil War. Author Julie Hedgepeth Williams chronicles the short life of this flight school as seen mainly through the eyes of the Alabama press, whose reporting and sometimes mis-reporting “reflected the misconceptions, hopes, dreams, and fears about aviation in 1910, painting a picture of a time when flight was untested, unsteady, and unavailable to most people.”

In this book, aviation expert Chris Thomas - inspired to research Typhoons by his own father, who flew numerous raids in a Typhoon during World War 2 - extols the great importance of the Typhoon wings in the ultimate Allied victory in Europe. The Typhoon was the RAF's heavyweight fighter-bomber of choice to support the British and Canadian armies during the invasion of northwest Europe. He describes their destruction of German radar in the lead-up to D-Day, the use of large-scale rocket projectiles in land battles and pinpoint attacks on German command and control centres, which crippled the Wehrmacht's ability to respond quickly to Allied troop movements. But not everything went smoothly for the Typhoon wings. Thomas discusses their epic battle with highly effective German flak installations, which prompted Air Chief Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst to remark 'I suppose that flying one of these aircraft was the most dangerous task the Air Force has ever asked anybody to do'.

World War II--"the good war"--is here viewed from a new angle of vision, one that sheds fresh light on how major decisions were reached. More than just a book on the strategy and outcome of American bombing in World War II, Wings of Judgment tells about choices in war, decisions that determined whether hundreds of thousands of people lived or died and whether famous cities and great monuments of civilization survived or were destroyed. It is about the bombing of Dresden and Berlin and of dozens of cities and towns all over Germany and about the preservation of Rome and Florence. It is about the incineration of Tokyo, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the sparing of one of Japan's most beautiful and holy places, the city of Kyoto. Describing U.S. air raids that terrified inhabitants of enemy nations and citizens of enemy-occupied countries, it raises serious questions about the military and moral effects of American bombing. It also tells of American efforts to avoid killing civilians needlessly. Taking us behind the scenes at military headquarters, Schaffer shows that even the toughest warriors occasionally found themselves offering moral arguments for their actions, arguing that they were made right by enemy atrocities, by the justness of the Allied cause, and by the numbers of lives of American servicemen that Allied bombing might save.

On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a new history of the momentous Normandy campaign with fresh insights from award-winning historian James Holland D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the seventy-six days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the west--the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. Yet as familiar as it is, as James Holland makes clear in his definitive history, many parts of the OVERLORD campaign, as it was known, are still shrouded in myth and assumed knowledge. Drawing freshly on widespread archives and on the testimonies of eye-witnesses, Holland relates the extraordinary planning that made Allied victory in France possible; indeed, the story of how hundreds of thousands of men, and mountains of materiel, were transported across the English Channel, is as dramatic a human achievement as any battlefield exploit. The brutal landings on the five beaches and subsequent battles across the plains and through the lanes and hedgerows of Normandy--a campaign that, in terms of daily casualties, was worse than any in World War I--come vividly to life in conferences where the strategic decisions of Eisenhower, Rommel, Montgomery, and other commanders were made, and through the memories of paratrooper Lieutenant Dick Winters of Easy Company, British corporal and tanker Reg Spittles, Thunderbolt pilot Archie Maltbie, German ordnance officer Hans Heinze, French resistance leader Robert Leblanc, and many others. For both sides, the challenges were enormous. The Allies confronted a disciplined German army stretched to its limit, which nonetheless caused tactics to be adjusted on the fly. Ultimately ingenuity, determination, and immense materiel strength--delivered with operational brilliance--made the difference. A stirring narrative by a pre-eminent historian, Normandy '44 offers important new perspective on one of history's most dramatic military engagements and is an invaluable addition to the literature of war.

The thrilling true story of the daring female aviators who helped the United States win World War II--only to be forgotten by the country they served. When Japanese planes executed a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Cornelia Fort was already in the air. At twenty-two, Cornelia had escaped Nashville's debutante scene for a fresh start as a flight instructor in Hawaii. She and her student were in the middle of their lesson when the bombs began to fall, and they barely made it back to ground that morning. Still, when the U.S. Army Air Forces put out a call for women pilots to aid the war effort, Cornelia was one of the first to respond. She became one of just over 1,100 women from across the nation to make it through the Army's rigorous selection process and earn her silver wings. In The Women with Silver Wings, historian Katherine Sharp Landdeck introduces us to these young women as they meet even-tempered, methodical Nancy Love and demanding visionary Jacqueline Cochran, the trailblazing pilots who first envisioned sending American women into the air, and whose rivalry would define the Women Airforce Service Pilots. For women like Cornelia, it was a chance to serve their country--and to prove that women aviators were just as skilled and able as men. While not authorized to serve in combat, the WASP helped train male pilots for service abroad and ferried bombers and pursuits across the country. Thirty-eight of them would not survive the war. But even taking into account these tragic losses, Love and Cochran's social experiment seemed to be a resounding success--until, with the tides of war turning and fewer male pilots needed in Europe, Congress clipped the women's wings. The program was disbanded, the women sent home. But the bonds they'd forged never failed, and over the next few decades, they came together to fight for recognition as the military veterans they were--and for their place in history.

The late Van Slayden trained on the PT-3 kite-like biplane in 1937, but he learned fighter pilot operations flying "by the seat of his pants," walking away from five crashes. Shortly after the invasion of Normandy, he landed on Utah Beach to help establish a US Army Air Forces' (AAF's) presence in Europe. He flew the P-47 Thunderbolt, a fighter-bomber, in combat over Northern France and commanded the 36th Fighter Group-the "Fightin' 36th- at Batogne, St. Vith, the Bridgehead at Remagen, Operations Grenade, Clarion, Varsity and other missions. His 22nd Fighter Squadron was the first in the AAF to land voluntarily on German soil. He was deep into Germany when the Nazis surrendered on May 8, 1945, which was remarkably anticlimactic. Van Slayden, a country boy from rural Tennessee, like so many of his contemporaries, stepped up to the challenge as part of the Greatest Generation.