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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)

• Tables; Figures; Foreword; A Note on the End of an Era; Acknowledgments; Introduction; What Created Success?; Strategic Culture; Relevance of the Study;
• 1. Preparing for War: Naval Education Between the World Wars; Introduction; Studying "The Right Stuff"; Study, Gaming, and Wartime Reality; The Naval Air Debate; The Carrier Debate; The Debate over Doctrine; War Plans; Implications for the War against Japan; Preparing for War; The United States Naval Academy and Strategic Culture; "Everybody Works but John Paul Jones"; Sound Military Decision; Strategic Culture in the Wartime Navy.

• Conclusio
• n2. The Battle of the Coral Sea; Japanese Opening Moves and Plans; Japan's Forces in the Pacific Area; The Situation in the Pacific in the Summer of 1942; Japanese Plans and Preparations; The American Plan; Operational Imperatives; The Tulagi Invasion; Prelude to the Main Action; The Main Action; Coral Sea in Retrospect: Conclusions;
• 3. The Battle of Midway; Opening Phases; The Situation in the Pacific in the Late Spring of 1942; The Commander and His Opponent; Japanese Preparations; Decisions vs. Intelligence; How the Plans Played Out.

• Prelude to Action in the Aleutians and at MidwayInformation Available to the Japanese Commander; Japanese Force Deployments; Information Available to the American Commander; American Command Relations; Aleutian Phase of the Operation; Midway Preliminary Action; Naval Air Station Midway 4 June Operations; Nagumo's Attack on Midway; Midway Carrier Action of 4 June 1942; Clash of Titans; Operations of the Hornet Air Group on 4 June; Operations of the Enterprise Air Group on 4 June; Operations of the Yorktown Air Group on 4 June; Recapping the Action; The Inevitable Japanese Counterattack.

• Death of the Kido ButaiJapan's Contemplated Night Action; Operations of 5 June; Operations of 6 June; Operations of 7 June; Midway in Retrospect: Conclusions;
• 4. The Fight for Guadalcanal: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons; Strategic Reappraisal; The Fight for Guadalcanal; Choosing a Commander; The Battle of Savo Island; Where Is Task Force 61? All the World Wonders; The Battle of the Eastern Solomons; Carrier Battle of 24 August 1942; Retirement from the Area and Aftermath; The Battle of the Eastern Solomons in Retrospect; Conclusions; Epitaph;
• 5. The Battle of Santa Cruz.

• The Battle for GuadalcanalPrelude to the Battle of Santa Cruz; Evidence of a Japanese Offensive; The Battle of Santa Cruz; The U.S. Carrier Strike; The Japanese Strikes; Results of the Battle; Continued Surface Action in the Solomons; Battle of Santa Cruz in Retrospect: Conclusions;
• 6. Battle of the Philippine Sea; Japan's "Absolute National Defense Line"; SLOCs to Victory Secured; MacArthur on a Roll; The U.S. Debate on Strategy; Executing the Combined Chiefs' Strategy; Central Solomons and New Britain: The Second Phase; Numbered Fleets; Operation "Elkton" and the Dual Advance on Rabaul.

A longtime professor at the Naval War College who once directed strategic and long-range planning for the Navy and Marine Corps in Europe considers the transformation of the U.S. Navy from a defensive-minded coastal defense force into an offensive risk-taking navy in the very early stages of World War II. Noting that none of the navy's most significant World War II leaders were commissioned before the Spanish-American War and none participated in any important offensive operations in World War I, Douglas Smith examines the premise that education, rather than experience in battle, accounts for that transformation. In this book, Smith evaluates his premise by focusing on the five carrier battles of the second world war to determine the extent to which the inter-war education of the major operational commanders translated into their decision processes, and the extent to which their interaction during their educational experiences transformed them from risk-adverse to risk-accepting in their operational concepts. His book will interest students of the Pacific War, naval aviation, education, and leadership. About the Author Douglas V. Smith is Professor of Strategy and Head of the Strategy and Policy Division at the U.S. Naval War College. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, and Naval War College, and holds a Ph.D. in military history from Florida State University.
(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)

The aeroplane, of which a practical version first flew in December 1903, was visualized by its inventors, the Wright brothers, as a means of enlarging peaceful communication between peoples. Its military uses were quickly grasped by others and it served as a scout, fighter, and eventually bomber during World War I. By the outbreak of World War II, all advanced states had organized, large military air forces, chiefly dedicated to bombardment, which exponents of air power believed would win wars independently of action by sea or land. The operations of the air forces in World War I, between the wars and during World War II are the subject of this narrative history.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)