Displaying 1-10 of 24
Displaying 1-10 of 24
After emerging in its initial form from the Glenn L. Martin plant in Baltimore, Maryland, in late 1940, the B‑26 Marauder twin-engined medium bomber attracted some unfair criticism and in some quarters labored under a bad name.
Often overlooked by aviation historians and writers – myself included! – is the aspect of training. This is possibly because it is not considered a particularly glamorous aspect of the ‘combat’ narrative. It was, however, essential.
Other than the British Eighth Army in Egypt, a small force of British ships and aircraft at besieged Malta, and another small British force at Gibraltar, the southern coast of the Mediterranean was entirely in the hands of either Italian and German forces, or held by the dependent pro-Axis Vichy French.
The U-2 proposal originated in November 1953 as Project Bald Eagle, a CIA initiative for a new reconnaissance type which the initially sceptical USAF would eventually buy into. It was needed to fly over the Soviet Union and provide information that was severely lacking on its military and industrial resources.
A decade in the works, the much anticipated Masters of the Air is a great television series which had the potential to be monumental. But most critics have agreed that this vast epic about the USAAF 100th Bomb Group, however powerful it was in its finest moments, failed to achieve the emotional connection of Band of Brothers, the 2001 milestone series from the same executive producers, Steven Spielberg, Gary Goetzman and Tom Hanks.
I have to admit that, when I was approached to write a book about the Harrier GR7 ‘in action’, it made me face all my prejudices as an ex-Tornado pilot. Firstly, I thought that the Harrier had done very little real operational work and, secondly, I suspected that the ‘Harrier Mafia’ would be unwilling to help a non-Harrier pilot write their history.
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Messerschmitt Bf 109 are two of the most iconic fighter aircraft of World War II. Designed to different requirements, these two aircraft clashed over North Africa, Sicily and Italy during 1942–43 in duels that have not heretofore been analyzed in detail.
As noted in the text, finding, identifying, and targeting adversary ships can often be a challenge. On 24 March 1986, Libya fired long-range SAMs to threaten US aircraft and sent out missile-armed ships toward the US fleet at night in heavy seas. During the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, Iran used small “bog hammer” attack boats, frigates, aircraft, and shore-based Silkworm anti-ship missiles to strike at oil tankers and threaten their naval escorts.
In today’s blog post, Bill Yenne, author of The Ones Who Got Away: Mighty Eighth Airmen on the Run in Occupied Europe, gives a brief overview of the story, and of the story behind the story.
After I wrote the definitive work on Operation I-Go (Avonmore Books 2022), I became intrigued as to why it had received only cursory attention in Western histories. Despite special intelligence briefings around the time, the Allies remained unaware that the Japanese were up to anything unusual.
Displaying 1-10 of 24
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