%{search_type} search results

"This is the story of the first women naval aviators and their struggles and triumphs as they earned their Wings of Gold, learned to fly increasingly sophisticated jet fighters and helicopters, mastered aircraft carrier landings, served at sea, and reached heights of command that would have been unthinkable less than a generation before. It is also the story of the legacy they left behind"-- Provided by publisher

• Wiley: the early years
• The road to Lakehurst
• The USS Shenandoah (ZR 1)
• The USS Los Angeles (ZR 3)
• The Shenandoah Disaster
• Changes in command
• Commanding the Los Angeles
• The USS Tennessee (BB 43)
• The USS Akron (ZRS 4)
• The crash of the Akron
• Aftermath of the Akron
• The USS Macon (ZRS 5)
• The end of an era
• USS Sirius (AK 15), Hell Gate, and helium
• War and battleships
• Kamikazes and beyond

This book is simultaneously a biography of Admiral Herbert Victor Wiley and a history of the U.S. Navy's lighter-than-air program. As tensions rose between Japan and the U.S. over control of East Asia and the Pacific Ocean the prospects of war between the two nations increased. The Navy tracked the Germans' use of zeppelins during the First World War and saw in them an aircraft with the potential to conduct long-range reconnaissance over the oceans - something that could not be achieved by airplanes or surface ships. While rapid progress was being made in manned flight it was still young enough that the future of LTA vs. HTA flight was unknown. At the time however airships had a much greater range than airplanes making them suitable for reconnaissance. In its history the Navy had four great airships - the U.S.S. Shenandoah the U.S.S. Los Angeles the U.S.S. Akron and the U.S.S. Macon. Wiley served on all four of these airships and the history of these vessels is covered through the career of Wiley. Three of the airships ended in disaster and Wiley survived the crash of two of them. The book explores in detail the events leading to the crash of each airship through examination of the records of the Navy's Courts of Inquiry that investigated the cause of each crash. The book also tracks issues surrounding the use of non-flammable helium as a lifting gas instead of highly explosive hydrogen used by the Germans. The U.S. had a monopoly on the supply of helium. While Germany sought to purchase helium from the U.S. the government board governing the sale of helium blocked is availability to Germany on the basis it might be used for wartime purposes. Dr. Hugo Eckener had run the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshaven since the end of WWI and he had a vision for LTA flight that was peaceful including international transoceanic passenger and freight services. The outbreak of WW II ended the zeppeling industry and dashed all of Eckener's dreams. Following the crash of the Macon Wiley returned to the surface fleet eventually becoming Commander of Destroyer Squadron 29 in the Asiatic Fleet shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Among all the celebrations of the RAF's centenary, it was largely forgotten that the establishment of an independent air force came at a cost - and it was the Royal Navy that paid the price. In 1918 it had been pre-eminent in the technology and tactics of employing aircraft at sea, but once it lost control of its own air power, it struggled to make the RAF prioritise naval interests, in the process losing ground to the rival naval air forces of Japan and the United States. This book documents that struggle through the cash-strapped 1920s and '30s, culminating in the Navy regaining control of its aviation in 1937, but too late to properly prepare for the impending war. However, despite the lack of resources, British naval flying had made progress, especially in the advancement of carrier strike doctrine. These developments are neatly illustrated by the experiences of Lieutenant William Lucy, who was to become Britain's first accredited air 'ace' of the war and to lead the world's first successful dive-bombing of a major warship. Making extensive use of the family archive, this book also reproduces many previously unseen photographs from Lucy's album, showing many aspects of life in the Fleet Air Arm up to the end of the Norway campaign. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, in November 1940 the inter-war concentration on carrier strike was to be spectacularly vindicated by the air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto - it inspired the Japanese to a far larger effort at Pearl Harbor the following year, but the Royal Navy had shown the way.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)