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• Machine generated contents note:
• pt. One The Legend
• pt. Two Csi Yangon
• pt. Three Burmese Daze
• pt. Four A Finding Of Fact
• pt. Five Fake History

Rumours of buried Spitfires from the Second World War have spread around the world for seventy-five years. In April 2012, the press reported that the UK had negotiated an agreement with Myanmar for the recovery of twenty crated Spitfires, reportedly buried after WW2. Astonishingly the agreement came about through the single-minded determination of a farmer, David Cundall. Armed with a high-tech survey showing mysterious shapes under the surface of Yangon International Airport, David's expedition is equipped with JCB excavators. But instead of Spitfires, the team unearths a tale of fake history. The Buried Spitfires of Burma explores what happened next as David Cundall's dream unravelled over the course of a historical 'whodunnit' that spans seven decades and three continents. It follows one of the most bizarre stories since the sensational Hitler Diaries hoax.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

The former colony of Spanish Sahara saw frequent outbursts of tribal and ethnic rebellions while ruled by the colonial authorities in the late 19th and through the early 20th Century. Its vastness and distances essentially dictated the application of air power in response. While most of these events attracted next to no attention in English-language media, the large-scale operations of the Spanish colonial authorities of the late 1950s became notable at least for the final combat deployment of the famous Messerschmitt Bf.109. Following the Spanish withdrawal from Spanish Sahara in 1975, a major war erupted as Sahrawi nationalists - organized by the POLISARIO front - engaged in guerrilla warfare against Moroccan armed forces deployed to secure the northern part of the country, and Mauritanian forces deployed in the south. Characteristically for this period, POLISARIO's insurgency was often misinterpreted in the West as 'Soviet-influenced', although the rebels never adapted any related frameworks for their operations and tactics, such as those of Mao Zedong. On the contrary, while Algeria at least tolerated their bases on its soil, it was Libya that provided most of the support for the insurgency, eventually enabling it to defeat the Mauritanian military, slightly over a year later. Combined with POLISARIO's raids deep into Mauritania this prompted France to launch a limited military intervention in support. While tactically successful, this proved insufficient: Mauritania withdrew in 1979 after signing a peace treaty. Morocco continued fighting a series of bitter campaigns through 1979 and 1980, until rising costs and casualties prompted its government into developing an entirely new strategy. Construction of extensive earthen fortifications eventually slowed the war down to one of low intensity, only sporadically interrupted by insurgent attempts to achieve at least local successes. With both sides realizing that no solution through an armed conflict was possible, a cease-fire agreement was signed in 1991. However, this conflict still remains unresolved: it merely shifted to civilian resistance. Warfare in Western Sahara has in many ways become exemplary for modern-day counter-insurgency efforts in Africa and elsewhere. This conflict has been falsely declared as a part of some larger, external conflict - the Cold War; in regards of the concept of an insurgency applying motorized forces to deliver often spectacular 'hit-and-run' attacks; and in regards of a conventional military reacting with a combination of earth berms and air power. Illustrated by over 100 photograph as, a dozen maps and 18 colour profiles, Showdown in Western Sahara offers a fascinating study of the military aspects of this conflict, warfare strategies, tactics and experiences with different weapons systems.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface Abbreviations
• 1 Combined Operations to 1500
• 2 The Early Modern Period, 1500 to 1700
• 3 The Eighteenth Century, 1700-1775
• 4 The American Revolution, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1775-1815
• 5 The Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914
• 6 The First World War, 1914-18
• 7 The Interwar Period, 1918-39
• 8 The Second World War, I, 1939-42
• 9 The Second World War, II, 1942-45
• 10 The Cold War, 1945-90
• 11 Since 1990
• 12 Conclusions Notes Selected Further Readin.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This compelling book provides the first global history of the evolution of combined operations since Antiquity. Beginning with amphibious warfare in the ancient world of the Romans, Vikings, and Mongols, Jeremy Black advances through the Gunpowder Revolution, the rise of maritime empires and the formation of nation-states, the early Industrial Revolution and the adaptation of modern technology to warfare, the twentieth-century world wars, the Cold War, and concluding with the modern age of irregular and asymmetric conflict. Black's informed and analytical narrative emphasizes conflicts around the world, focusing not only on leading powers but also regional combatants. His case studies include amphibious operations in the Mongol invasions of Japan, the War for American Independence, and the Gallipoli campaign of World War I. He also explores the development and effectiveness of airborne operations as a way to project military power inland. Offering a balanced assessment of strategic, operational, and technical developments over time, Black considers both the potential and limitations of amphibious and airborne warfare-past, present, and future.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• chapter one. Atlantique's anatomy
• chapter two. Backdrop blunder
• chapter three. The incident itself
• chapter four. International court of justice
• chapter five. Consequences
• the culmination
• chapter six. Closure conclusion
• Appendix one-General Act 1928
• Appendix two-Preventin of air space violations
• Appendix three-The Lahore declaration
• Bibliography
• Index

• Volume
• 1. Air warfare over the last African colony, 1945-1975

The former colony of Spanish Sahara saw frequent outbursts of tribal and ethnic rebellions already while ruled by colonial authorities, in the late 19th and through early 20th Century. Its vastness and distances de-facto dictated the application of air power in response. While most of these attracted next to no attention in English-language media, at least the large-scale operations of the Spanish colonial authorities of the late 1950s became notable for the final combat deployment of the famous Messerschmitt Bf.109. Narby, their common history as former French colonies resulted in a short war between Algeria and Morocco, which in turn prompted an arms race that lasted well into the 1980s. Following much more action than was ever reported in the media, and amid growing resistance from natives and increasing international pressure, Spain withdrew from Spanish Sahara in 1975, indirectly opening a new chapter of this part of the world, which is going to be covered in Volume 2. Warfare in Western Sahara has in many ways become exemplary for modern-day counter-insurgency efforts in Africa and elsewhere. This is so in regards of this conflict being mis-declared as a part of some larger, external conflict - like the Cold War - in regards of the concept of an insurgency applying motorized forces to deliver often spectacular 'hit-and-run' attacks; and in regards of a conventional military reacting with a combination of earth berms and air power. Illustrated by over 100 photographs, dozen of maps and 15 colour profiles, Showdown in Western Sahara, Volume 1 offers a fascinating study of the military aspects of this conflict, warfare strategies, tactics and experiences with different weapons systems.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Designed in response to a 1951 requirement, the C-130 Hercules is the most successful military airlifter ever built. Since it first flew in prototype form on 23 August 1954, more than 2,100 have been produced in over eighty different versions. Hercules serves more than sixty air forces, as well as many civilian cargo operators, in a multiplicity of roles, including air-to-air refueller, gunship, airborne command post, flying hospital and fire-fighter. This rugged and easily maintained aircraft entered service in 1956 with the USAF Tactical Air Command. Ten years later the 'Charlie 130' was providing the essential logistical support in Vietnam. This period in South-East Asia was the Hercules' finest hour. Paradrops, airlift and evacuation operations were completed around the clock, often at low level, usually under fire and nearly always in bad weather. A generation later this 'Mr Dependable' was serving with equal distinction in the Gulf War in the role of airlifter, radio-countermeasures and 'psy-ops' platform, gunship and, once again, 'block-buster bomber'. The 'Herky Bird' or 'Fat Albert', as the C-130 is fondly known, has proved a key component in humanitarian relief operations ever since, in all parts of the world. The incredible success story of the C-130 is far from over. Here Martin W. Bowman tells the full story of this remarkable aircraft at first-hand.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

On December 18, 1972, more than one hundred U.S. B-52 bombers flew over North Vietnam to initiate Operation Linebacker II. During the next eleven days, sixteen of these planes were shot down and another four suffered heavy damage. These losses soon proved so devastating that Strategic Air Command was ordered to halt the bombing. The U.S. Air Force's poor performance in this and other operations during Vietnam was partly due to the fact that they had trained their pilots according to methods devised during World War II and the Korean War, when strategic bombers attacking targets were expected to take heavy losses. Warfare had changed by the 1960s, but the USAF had not adapted. Between 1972 and 1991, however, the Air Force dramatically changed its doctrines and began to overhaul the way it trained pilots through the introduction of a groundbreaking new training program called "Red Flag." In The Air Force Way of War, Brian D. Laslie examines the revolution in pilot instruction that Red Flag brought about after Vietnam. The program's new instruction methods were dubbed "realistic" because they prepared pilots for real-life situations better than the simple cockpit simulations of the past, and students gained proficiency on primary and secondary missions instead of superficially training for numerous possible scenarios. In addition to discussing the program's methods, Laslie analyzes the way its graduates actually functioned in combat during the 1980s and '90s in places such as Grenada, Panama, Libya, and Iraq. Military historians have traditionally emphasized the primacy of technological developments during this period and have overlooked the vital importance of advances in training, but Laslie's unprecedented study of Red Flag addresses this oversight through its examination of the seminal program.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Contents: Introduction
• Part I Threats: Constructing the knock-out blow, 1908-1931--The bomber ascendant, 1932-1941. Part II Responses: Living with the bomber: adaptation
• The only defence is in offence: resistance
• Wings over the world: negotiation. Part III Crises: Defence panics and air panics
• The German air menace: 1913, 1922 and 1935
• Barcelona, Canton and London: 1938
• The Battles of London: 1917 and 1940
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth.But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Airborne intelligence sources
• Air-to-air case studies
• Tactical and strategic heavy-lifting
• Maritime air power
• Air power and strategic effect
• Air power and tactical effect
• Conclusions.

No other technical development since the introduction of gunpowder has had as great an influence on warfare as the aircraft. From its early beginnings as simply a means of aerial reconnaissance to its utter supremacy on the battlefield, the aircraft has evolved into the most versatile and precise killing machine known to man. In this wide-ranging and comprehensive study, David Sloggett, an internationally-respected defence analyst, investigates the changing role and increasing significance of air power over the course of the previous 100 years. This is accomplished by detailing every major conflict during that period including not only the two world wars and the recent conflicts in the Middle East but also the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Falklands War and Russian use of air power in Afghanistan. Air power's role in Malaya, Oman, Kenya and in Northern Ireland is also explained. A Century of Air Power is the most important study of the use of military aircraft ever undertaken and as such provides valuable lessons for the future - not only for the commanders who have to apply these all-powerful weapons but also for the politicians who have to determine its use.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In recent years, discussions about external military intervention in local conflicts have often included consideration of no-fly zones (NFZs) as a policy option. In the past two decades, the U.S. Air Force has participated in three contingencies involving NFZs over Bosnia, Iraq, and Libya, and NFZ proposals have been proffered for some time as an option for intervention in the Syrian civil war that would avoid placing Western troops on the ground. This paper provides a preliminary look at NFZs as a strategic approach in such situations. It evaluates the possible objectives of NFZs, including (1) preventing the use of airpower, (2) coercing adversaries, (3) preparing future battlefields, (4) weakening potential enemies, (5) political posturing, and (6) signaling or creating commitment, and discusses the potential utility and probable limitations of each.

• Preface: The Last Dogfight
• 1. Pilots of the Purple Twilight
• 2. A Wing and a Prayer
• 3. Archie
• 4. The New Front Line
• 5. Death, Drink, Luck
• 6.The Third Service
• 7. Jonah's Gourd
• 8. Arming for Armageddon
• 9. Into Battle
• 10. Apotheosis
• 11. Flying Blind
• 12. Seabirds
• 13. Wind, Sand and Stars
• 14. No Moon Tonight
• 15. Air Supremacy
• 16. Jet
• 17. 'Fox Two Away!'
• 18. Per Ardua ad Astra.

The Royal Air Force is synonymous with its heroic achievements in the summer of 1940, when Winston Churchill's 'famous few' - the Hurricane and Spitfire pilots of RAF Fighter Command - held Goeering's Luftwaffe at bay in the Battle of Britain, thereby changing the course of the war. For much of the twentieth century, warplanes were fixed in the world's imagination, a symbol of the perils and excitements of the modern era. But within the space of a hundred years, military aviation has morphed from the exotic to the mundane. An activity which was charged with danger - the domain of the daring - is now carried out by computers and pilotless drones. Aviators have always seemed different to soldiers and sailors - more adventurous, questing and imaginative. Their stories gripped the public and in both wars and air aces dominated each side's propaganda, capturing hearts and dreams. Writing with the verve, passion and the sheer narrative aplomb familiar to many thousands of readers from his bestselling Second World War aerial histories, Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys, Patrick Bishop's Wings is a rich and compelling account of military flying from its heroic early days to the present.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In this book, RAND provides an evaluation of the Navy's ongoing and proposed unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) programs and describes the most promising applications of those UASs to the Navy1s operational tasks. The book identifies robust communications as a key enabler for UASs in many operational tasks and recommends steps the Navy can take to ensure these communications are available.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

To bale out of a stricken aeroplane is a pilot's or aircrew's final chance to escape death. It is a traumatic and hazardous exercise that is only practiced in extremis and is in itself full of danger with no guarantee of survival. Many struggled free of a flaming and spinning aircraft only to see their parachute alight above them, some were machine gunned to death by their opponents as they drifted to earth, some landed in mine-fields and were blown apart and many landed in forests and died suspended from the treetops. And yet many survived, some to fight again and some to become prisoners of war. This book relates the experiences of many airmen who survived to tell the tale, some quite remarkable because of pure good luck, some because of ingenuity and some through pure determination to survive at all costs. This book includes escapes from crippled German, British and US aircraft; stories of the first pilots to use parachutes in WW1; amazing escapes from aircraft in the inter-war years.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Giulio Douhet and the Origins of Air Power Theory
• 2. Trenchard and "Morale Bombing": The evolution of Royal Air Force doctrine before World War II
• 3. John C. Slessor and the Genesis of Air Interdiction
• 4. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Britain's Fleet Air Arm before World War II
• 5. The Impact of Tecnhology and Design Choice on the Development of US Fighter Aircraft
• 6. Clipping the Bomber's Wings: The Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Royal Air Force, 1932-34
• 7. Air Power and Joint Operations During World War II
• 8. The B-29 Air Campaign against Japan
• 9. Air Strategy: Targeting for effect
• 10. Precision Aerospace Power, Discrimination and the Future of War
• 11. Gradual Escalation: A return to the future?
• 12. The Versailles Treaty and Iraq: The road to Munich
• 13. Aerospace Power and the Post-Kosovo World
• 14. Strategic Implications for the Aerospace Nation.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

These essays cover a wide range of subjects and tell the story of air power's evolution over the past century. The author discusses the golden age of air theory before World War II, examining the ideas of British, American and continental airmen. In the great test of World War II, he covers some of the key roles played by air power in both Europe and the Pacific. Reviewing the Cold War era, Meilinger relates how airmen had to grapple not only with nuclear war planning, but also the requirement to wage limited wars in Korea and Vietnam. After the fall of the Soviet Union airmen once again had to rethink the role of air power, while also waging decisive air campaigns in Iraq and the Balkans. The final essays deal with the opportunities presented by what is now termed aerospace power, as well as some of the challenges of the new millennium.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
According to the author all aircrews, tacticians and those who direct them have to realise the limitations of air power during conflicts. For years opinion has differed as to whether the aircraft has altered war strategies or merely the tactics of war. This volume explores the limits of airpower.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)