A True Flyer


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A True Flyer: Memories of a World War II Air Apache


Book Description

Memoir of WWII B-25 pilot Jay Moore, member of the 345th Bomb Group, known as the Air Apaches. The book chronicles the first twenty-four years of his life (1921-45) from growing up on a farm in Biggsville, Illinois, through the deprivations of the 1930's Depression, to his combat duty in the South Pacific. A True Flyer combines Moore's oral history, photos, and excerpts from his diary and love letters into a funny, colorful, sometimes brash narrative. Enjoy the military aviation history of WWII flyers: from his solo in the Boeing PT-17 "Stearman" biplane, advanced training in the T-6 "Texan," and North American B-25 "Mitchell" bomber on bases in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. This second edition contains new photographs and a memorial to the author.




Air Apaches


Book Description

The American 345th Bomb Group--the Air Apaches--was legendary in the war against Japan. The first fully trained and fully equipped group sent to the South Pacific, the 345th racked up a devastating score against the enemy. Armed to the teeth with machine guns and fragmentation bombs, and flying their B-25s at impossibly low altitudes--often below fifty feet--the pilots and air crews strafed and bombed enemy installations and shipping with a fury that helped cripple Japan. One of the sharpest tools in the U.S. arsenal, the 345th performed essential missions during Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s campaigns in New Guinea and the Philippines, earning an impressive four Distinguished Unit Citations. This was punishingly dangerous work, and the 345th lost 177 aircraft and 712 men--young men doing their duty in the spirit of the Greatest Generation. Neither was this the more gentlemanly war of Europe, with its more temperate climate, resistance networks aiding downed crews, and POW camps. Airmen shot down in the Pacific theater faced drowning in the ocean, disappearing in the jungle, or torturing and beheading by the Japanese in a war of no quarter expected, no quarter given. A compelling follow-up to Jay A. Stout’s Hell’s Angels, Air Apaches reconstructs the missions of the 345th Bomb Group in striking detail, with laser focus on the men who manned the cockpits, navigated the B-25s, dropped the bombs, serviced the planes, and helped win the war. To tell this remarkable story, Stout worked closely with the group’s surviving veterans and dug deep into firsthand accounts. The result is a compelling narrative of men at war that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.




Fighting Back


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Fighting Back is the story of Stan Andrews, an assimilated American Jew and World War II veteran who became one of the first fighter pilots in the history of the Israeli Air Force. “Jeffrey and Craig Weiss have uncovered the story of a Jewish hero in the mold of a Leon Uris character. Readers will enjoy trying to keep up with Stan Andrews—a typical Jewish New Yorker turned daring combat pilot—as he chases history from the air force planes of the United States and the nascent state of Israel.” –Dan Senor, New York Times bestselling co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. “Absorbing and beautifully written, Fighting Back tells the thrilling story of an unlikely American Jewish hero. At a time when some American Jews are distancing themselves from the Jewish state, this book is a powerful reminder of the deep roots connecting American Jewry and Israel.” –Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, author, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor In 1948, Stan Andrews left a comfortable postwar life in Los Angeles to travel to the war-torn Middle East, where a four-front Arab invasion threatened to destroy the newly-declared State of Israel. There he joined the Israeli Air Force and became one of its first fighter pilots. Andrews was an unexpected volunteer for the fight for a Jewish state. He was many things—an artist, writer, assimilated Jew, ladies’ man, pilot, and combat veteran of the Pacific War. He had previously been aloof from the struggle for Jewish independence but found himself so roused by the anti-Semitism of 1940s America that he decided to go to Israel and risk everything. Stan made the most of his time in Israel, serving in fighter and bomber squadrons and leaving his mark on an Israeli Air Force that has since become the stuff of legend.







Soldiers


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Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil


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We Band of Brothers


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The 345th Bomb Group, Air Apaches, Fifth Air Force, as the first full Air Force Combat Group sent to the Pacific in World War II, added a new dimension to the ever-growing saga of the B-25 . . . a minimum altitude bomber-strafer. We Band of Brothers chronicles the experiences of their use of the B-25 in the finest tradition and heritage of their use of the B-25 in the finest tradition and heritage of the U.S. Air Force. - Lt. General J.H. Doolittle (Retired), U.S. Air Force. R.E. Peppy Blount has been a public figure in Texas since he returned from the South Pacific as a veteran of World War II. Captain Blount was highly decorated with honors including the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was also awarded the DAR Medal of Honor and inducted into the CAF Combat Airman's Hall of Fame in 1999.




Thomas Bell, Ulster Scot, to South Carolina and Allied Families


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Thomas Bell (ca. 1731-1795) married Jane and immigrated to South Carolina before the Revolutionary War. Descendants lived in South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, California and elsewhere.




A-10s Over Kosovo


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First published in 2003. The NATO-led Operation Allied Force was fought in 1999 to stop Serb atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. This war, as noted by the distinguished military historian John Keegan, "marked a real turning point . . . and proved that a war can be won by airpower alone." Colonels Haave and Haun have organized firsthand accounts of some of the people who provided that airpower-the members of the 40th Expeditionary Operations Group. Their descriptions-a new wingman's first combat sortie, a support officer's view of a fighter squadron relocation during combat, and a Sandy's leadership in finding and rescuing a downed F-117 pilot-provide the reader with a legitimate insight into an air war at the tactical level and the airpower that helped convince the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, to capitulate.