Published in association with Imperial War Museums, this is a fascinating anthology of first-hand stories from Spitfire heroes and heroines of the Second World War.The Spitfire is the world's most iconic aeroplane. Coming into its own during the Battle of Britain, it became famous during the Second World War as the only plane that could match the enemy fighters in the sky.Yet, even today, the history of the Spitfire contains many hitherto hidden or little-known stories of the men and women behind the plane; not only the gifted creators and inventors who brought the Spitfire to life, or the brave fighter pilots from many countries who triumphed in battle, but also the thousands of other people whose lives were affected by their personal connection to it - engineers, ground crew, factory or office workers, and their families. Spitfire Stories recounts the memories and stories of these people, from the birth of the Spitfire in the 1930s to the present day. Among these accounts is the extraordinary tale of the fighter pilot who only discovered, fifty years on, the tragic truth of his last Spitfire flight, the businessman whose blank cheque changed the course of the war, the ninety-five-year-old RAF engineer who was determined to be reunited with his beloved Spit before he died, and the little girl who inspired the plane's creation - and went on to marry a movie star.Using documents, letters and photographs from the Imperial War Museums' unparalleled archive, plus exclusive first-hand interviews, these stories of the Spitfire are a revelatory collection of small but significant histories, to be treasured by all who love and admire the iconic plane.
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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.
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• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Pilot's House
• Chapter One: Learning to Fly
• Chapter Two: Frannie's Days of Yore
• Chapter Three: The Coming of the Cold War
• Chapter Four: Waiting Out Korea
• Chapter Five: Camping Out in Miami and Topsail
• Chapter Six: School Pains and Home Wars
• Chapter Seven: Trouble With the Army
• Chapter Eight: Strange Days in the Deep South
• Chapter Nine: Coming of Age in California
• Chapter Ten: Cold War Catholicism, JFK, and Cuba
• Chapter Eleven: The Discipline of
• Synchronized Swimming
• Chapter Twelve: Saint Brigit/Bardot
• Chapter Thirteen: Back to the Swamps
• Chapter Fourteen: Transition out of America
• Chapter Fifteen: Germany in the Sixties
• Chapter Sixteen: At Play in the Fields of Empire
• Chapter Seventeen: Following European Politics
• Chapter Eighteen: Making a Home in Paris
• Chapter Nineteen: New Constellations
• Chapter Twenty: An Immoveable Feast
• Chapter Twenty-One: Our Friends the Draft Resisters Chapter Twenty-Two: Show Down With Frannie
• Chapter Twenty-Three: May '68
• Chapter Twenty-Four: Show Down With Jack
• Chapter Twenty-Five: Lost Days
• Chapter Twenty-Six: Heidelberg Redux
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Beaker of the Warm South Chapter Twenty-Eight: The End of the Cold War
• Notes.
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Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War details author and Professor Mary Lawlor's unconventional upbringing in Cold War America. Memories of her early life-as the daughter of a Marine Corps and then Army father-reveal the personal costs of tensions that once gripped the entire world, and illustrate the ways in which bold foreign policy decisions shaped an entire generation of Americans, defining not just the ways they were raised, but who they would ultimately become. As a kid on the move she was constantly in search of something to hold on to, a longing that led her toward rebellion, to college in Paris, and to the kind of self-discovery only possible in the late 1960s. A personal narrative braided with scholarly, retrospective reflections as to what that narrative means, Fighter Pilot's Daughter zooms in on a little girl with a childhood full of instability, frustration and unanswered questions such that her struggles in growth, her struggles, her yearnings and eventual successes exemplify those of her entire generation. From California to Georgia to Germany, Lawlor's family was stationed in parts of the world that few are able to experience at so young an age, but being a child of military parents has never been easy. She neatly outlines the unique challenges an upbringing without roots presents someone struggling to come to terms with a world at war, and a home in constant turnover and turmoil. This book is for anyone seeking a finer awareness of the tolls that war takes not just on a nation, but on that nation's sons and daughters, in whose hearts and minds deeper battles continue to rage long after the soldiers have come home.
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With heightened tensions mounting in the Cold War, President Dwight Eisenhower's request for more accurate intelligence information on the Soviet Union was the spark that ignited the U-2 project. Modified USAF bombers began overflights of the Soviet Union in 1951, but existing lower flying aircraft in the US inventory were vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and a number of cross-border flights were shot down. To meet the challenge and improve the survivability, the Lockheed Corporation received approval for their revolutionary design of a new recon aircraft on December 9, 1954. The company began work under a heavy veil of secrecy with only 81 people, including 25 engineers. A test pilot flew the first flight on August 1, 1955, after only eight months of production, a record-breaking result for rollout of a new project, especially one this complex and innovative. A dedicated and inventive group of contractors came together to support the project with partial pressure suits for pilots, high-resolution cameras, and an engine that could carry the aircraft to altitudes of 70,000 feet and higher. Nicknamed the Dragon Lady, the U-2 has flown over Cuba, Alaska, North and South poles, Vietnam, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, and Afghanistan. The U-2 is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. More recently it flew over the hurricane-ravaged US Gulf Coast to collect imagery of the destruction over a 90,000 square mile area. First-person memoirs of many of the men who supported the early US spy plane project are included in this book. They include pilots, maintenance specialists, a flight surgeon, photographic specialists and some family members. The US also trained U-2 pilots from Taiwan and the UK and some of their photos and memoirs are in this collection. Maintenance technicians recalled working long hours to prepare aircraft for historic flights over Cuba. Photographic specialists remembered the difficult conditions in Vietnam, and the care required to download the exposed film of North Vietnamese targets from the cameras in the aircraft. All of these experiences were achieved under Top Secret security conditions and on a"need to know" basis.
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Contact! is an enthralling set of recollections from ex-RAF pilot, instructor and test pilot Bob Tuxford. The book follows his twenty-year career within the RAF and describes highlights of active service across the world, including an accompanied exchange tour in the US Air Force and participation in the Falklands war. The title, a nod to the crucial response during air-to-air refuelling, underlines the important role that Bob carried out during his career as a captain of Victor K1s 214 Squadron in the 1970s, and K2s on 57 and 55 Squadrons in the early 1980s. This experience led to him playing a vital role in the first Black Buck mission during the Falklands campaign by being the last Victor tanker to refuel the Vulcan piloted by Martin Withers before bombing commenced on that fateful night in 1982. For this, he was awarded the Air Force Cross for gallantry. In the latter years of his career, Bob made the transition to test piloting and became the senior test pilot on the heavy aircraft test squadron at the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment, Boscombe Down. This book is not just for aviation enthusiasts, but for those wanting a greater insight into the importance of the work carried out by tanker squadrons within the RAF during the Cold War.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)