The Battle of Britain

The Battle of Britain PDF Author: Christer Bergström
Publisher: Casemate / Vaktel Forlag
ISBN: 1612003648
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
A thorough look at this turning-point WWII aerial battle, with eyewitness accounts, maps, and rare photos: “incredibly well-researched” (Aircrew Book Review). By late summer 1940, Nazi Germany had conquered all its opponents on the continent, including the British Army itself, which was forced to scramble back aboard small boats to its shores. A non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in hand, Hitler had only one remaining object that season—the British Isles themselves. However, before he could invade, his Luftwaffe needed to wipe the Royal Air Force from the skies. History’s first strategic military campaign conducted in the air alone was about to take place. This book contains a large number of dramatic eyewitness accounts, even as it reveals new facts that will alter common perceptions of the battle. For example, the twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf 110 was actually a good day fighter, and it performed at least as well in this role as the Bf 109 during the battle. The Luftwaffe’s commander, Hermann Göring, performed far better than has been believed. The British night bombers played a more decisive role than previously thought; in addition, this book disproves that the German 109 pilots were in any way superior to their Hurricane or Spitfire counterparts. The author has examined records from both sides and provides surprising statistics that shatter much conventional wisdom—laying out the Battle of Britain as seldom seen before. Includes color photos of the relevant aircraft.

Spitfire Pilot Air Commodore Geoffrey Stephenson

Spitfire Pilot Air Commodore Geoffrey Stephenson PDF Author: John Shields
Publisher: Air World
ISBN: 103610544X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Under cloudless blue skies, the Oakwood Cemetery Annex in Montgomery, Alabama hosts the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the United States. Most of the graves contain young RAF trainee pilots killed during their flying training at nearby Maxwell and Gunter airfields during the Second World War. However, there is another grave, located at the edge of the plot, not from the early 1940s but, from 1954. The grave marks the final resting place of a 44-year-old senior RAF officer, Air Commodore Geoffrey Stephenson CBE. It begs the questions who was he and why is he buried there? This book sets out to answer both these questions. As a result, this is the remarkable story of not only Stephenson’s life but the people, planes and places that would leave an indelible mark on a seasoned fighter pilot. After growing up in Lincolnshire and Ireland, 18-year-old Stephenson joined the RAF in 1928 alongside Douglas Bader who would become a life-long friend. After leaving Cranwell, the pair both joined 23 Squadron. In the 1930s, Stephenson rose through the ranks to command 19 Squadron, a Duxford-based Spitfire unit, that would see his baptism of fire over Dunkirk in late May 1940. Following the downing of a Junkers Ju 87 Stuka, Stephenson was himself shot down and crash landed on the beach at Sangatte. After a brief period on the run in France and Belgium, Stephenson was taken into captivity, spending the next five years as a prisoner of war, ending up at the iconic Colditz Castle where, ironically, he was reunited with his old friend Bader. Upon his release in April 1945, Stephenson quickly resumed his RAF career commanding, instructing, and flying the latest jet fighters, both at home and overseas. He was aide-de-camp to two monarchs, including escorting a young Queen Elizabeth II during her 1953 Coronation Review. However, his already eventful career would take a tragic turn. In 1954, Stephenson flew to the United States to review their latest acquisitions, which included a flight in the supersonic F-100 Super Sabre. It would be his last flight. Nevertheless, Stephenson’s legacy lives on at his former base at Duxford in the guise of the Imperial War Museum’s immaculately restored Spitfire Mk.I N3200. This was the very aircraft in which he force-landed on 26 May 1940. Recovered from the French beach, N3200 was painstakingly rebuilt and returned to flying condition. Today, N3200 is often referred to as a ‘National Treasure’. This is the biography of a remarkable pilot, husband and father, revealing the planes he flew, the places he visited, and the incredible people he met along the way.

Malloch's Spitfire

Malloch's Spitfire PDF Author: Nick Meikle
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612002536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
The story of one of history’s greatest fighter aircraft from WWII to its remarkable restoration in 1980 Rhodesia: “an aviation classic-in-waiting” (Airscape). In 1977, the Rhodesian Air Force retrieved a World War II–era Supermarine Spitfire F Mk 22. But while the RAF was embroiled in the Bush War, the dream of restoring the aircraft was frustrated by international sanctions. That’s when legendary pilot John “Jack” McVicar Malloch took control of the project. Not only had Jack flown Spitfires during World War II, he was also uniquely positioned to circumvent sanctions through his airfreight company, Air Trans Africa. With ingenuity, passion, and a team of trusted engineers, Jack realized the dream of putting Spitfire PK350 back in the air on March 29, 1980. In Malloch’s Spitfire, author Nick Meikle tells the full story of this remarkable restoration and reveals some fascinating insights about the aircraft. The reader is taken on a journey through the Spitfire’s life, beginning with her first test flight in 1945. The project’s lead engineer and many of the surviving pilots who flew her also share their memories. For two years, PK350 delighted those fortunate enough to see her fly. Then, on what was planned to be her last flight, Malloch’s Spitfire never returned to base.

Spitfire Stories

Spitfire Stories PDF Author: Jacky Hyams
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1782438173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Published in association with the Imperial War Museum, this is a fascinating anthology of first-hand stories from Spitfire heroes and heroines of World War II. Using documents, letters, stories, photographs and articles from the Museum's unparalleled archive, this is a tribute to the most iconic plane in aviation history - and the people behind it.

Sixty Years of Airfix Models

Sixty Years of Airfix Models PDF Author: Jeremy Brook
Publisher: Crowood
ISBN: 1847979769
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Book Description
The best-known and most important manufacturer of plastic model kits in the UK, Airfix has been at the forefront of the industry since 1955 when the first Airfix aircraft kit appeared in UK branches of Woolworth's. The kits were made to a constant scale and covered a wide variety of subjects, from aircraft to birds and from tanks to dinosaurs. In 1981 the famous London-based company closed down and only the kits survived intact. For the next twenty-five years Airfix was run by Palitoy and later Humbrol, but suffered from a lack of investment. In 2006, Hornby Hobbies Ltd, the train and Scalextric manufacturer, bought the ailing company and transformed it. Money and resources were ploughed into the range, and today Airfix releases around twenty new kits per year, designed to an incredibly high standard. The old kits of the 1950s and 1960s are gradually being replaced by new state-of-the-art tooling, all bearing that most prestigious name - Airfix. Published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the first Airfix aircraft kit, Sixty Years of Airfix Models, tells the full story, year by year, of the company and its products. Illustrated throughout with colour photographs.of kits, box art and completed models.

The Spitfire Grill

The Spitfire Grill PDF Author: James Valcq
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573629303
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
It all starts with the release of fidgety, suspicious Percy Talbott from state prison after serving a five-year sentence. We don't know why, only that she's released and on her way to Gilead and its "colors of paradise." But when she arrives it is February and bitter cold, and the only one around to meet her is restless Sheriff Joe Turner, who takes her to the Spitfire Grill to help the aging Hannah Ferguson run the diner. All is gray, dismal and listless around them, and the characters are in the "winter of their lives" emotionally and spiritually.

Angels Ten!

Angels Ten! PDF Author: Richard Gilman
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1770972765
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
On November 24th, 1941, Richard Gilman crashed his disabled Spitfire V-B at high speed into a mud bank near Shoreham Emergency Airport in Sussex, England. He was only 19 years old. The accident led to several operations, over a year of hospitalization and many more of recovery... The book you are holding takes the reader on an insightful journey through a collection of personal memoirs. It was a time of undeniable excitement and indelible pain. These stories are important because they help us understand a little of what war was like, how it felt ...The survivors of the last World War are dwindling fast, and too soon there will be no one to remind us that wars are not solutions. Read the Kirkus review here: ...

Caroline

Caroline PDF Author: Sarah Miller
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062685368
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 437

Book Description
USA Today Bestseller! One of Refinery29's Best Reads of September In this novel authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust, Sarah Miller vividly recreates the beauty, hardship, and joys of the frontier in a dazzling work of historical fiction, a captivating story that illuminates one courageous, resilient, and loving pioneer woman as never before—Caroline Ingalls, "Ma" in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books. In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family, for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory. Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril. The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone, sickness tended without the aid of doctors, and babies birthed without the accustomed hands of mothers or sisters. But Caroline’s new world is also full of tender joys. In adapting to this strange new place and transforming a rough log house built by Charles’ hands into a home, Caroline must draw on untapped wells of strength she does not know she possesses. For more than eighty years, generations of readers have been enchanted by the adventures of the American frontier’s most famous child, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House books. Now, that familiar story is retold in this captivating tale of family, fidelity, hardship, love, and survival that vividly reimagines our past.
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