Books about Anti aircraft from Amazon.com

Ben is one of those millions of young men who were children of the great depression His narrative takes the reader through five years of his life, from 1940 to 1945. It tells of his transition from a normal naive teenager to a battle-hardened soldier fighting a losing battle on Corregidor, and then suffering the harsh, inhumane indignities heaped upon him as a prisoner of war when the Philippine Islands were surrendered to the Japanese Forces on May 6, 1942.

This is a story of survival. How does one survive three and a half years as a POW under a brutal enemy? It shows how an American boy becomes a man by adjusting to a completely foreign environment, every day meeting the daily hardships, obstacles and challenges served up by the unfeeling captor.

Winner of the North American Bookdealers Exchange "BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD" for 1989-90..
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The SA-2, nicknamed Red SAM, is the most widely used air defense missile in history, most famous for nearly sparking a nuclear exchange between the USSR and America when one brought down a U-2 spy plane in 1960. Deployed widely against American aircraft in Vietnam the SA-2 has seen service in North Korea, Egypt, and various world conflicts including the 2003 Gulf War and remains in service today despite its aging 50-year-old technology.

Using rare interviews and accounts from the Russian designers of the weapon, and supported by photographs and color artwork, Steven J Zaloga examines the development of the SA-2, linking the technical history of the weapon to its massive impact on air campaigns during the Cold War, and investigates the design changes, which helped the SA-2 stand the test of time.

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Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the thundering darkness. Such "cinematic" scenes, played out with increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of the German war effort that has yet to get its full due.

Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air campaigns, German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by American, British, and German historians (and by veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable matériel and personnel resources desperately needed elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees with that view and makes a convincing case for the significant contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft defenses.

During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland, killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000, and destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defense of its own skies. By contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact that they employed more than a million men and women, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far above high-accuracy altitudes, and thus allowed Germany to hold out far longer than it might have otherwise.

Westermann's definitive study sheds new light on every facet of the development and organization of this vital defense arm, including its artillery, radar, searchlight, barrage balloon, decoy sites, and command components. Highlighting the convergence of technology, strategy, doctrine, politics, and economics, Flak also provides revealing insights into German strategic thought, Hitler's obsession with micromanaging the war, and the lives of the members of the flak units themselves, including the large number of women, factory workers, and even POWs who participated.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series..
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Coastal Command - along with, domestically, Bomber Command and Fighter Command - represented an element in the Royal Air Force's major contribution to Britain's military efforts during World War 2. However, its achievements are less familiar than those of Fighter Command, whose victory in the Battle of Britain ensured that Germany was not victorious in the west, and Bomber Command, whose campaign against occupied Europe severely damaged the German war effort. But the role of Coastal Command was perhaps even more important for, without its campaign in at the Atlantic against the marauding U-boats of the Kriegsmarine, it is unlikely that Britain could have survived, being starved of the food and materials essential for the maintenance of the war effort. Of thee 727 U-boats sunk during world War 2, no fewer than 192 were sunk by aircraft of Coastal Command. Drawn from the archives of the Imperial War Museum, where the author works in the Photographic Department, Coastal Command is a pictorial history of Coastal Command during World War 2. Featuring more than 200 images, the book explores the history of the Command during the war, its aircraft, successes (and failures), and the men who served in it. The book follows on from the author's earlier highly successful and well-regarded volumes on Bomber Command (now out of print) and Fighter Command. Superbly illustrated throughout with remarkable images drawn from the archives of the Imperial War Museum alongside detailed and well-researched captions, Coastal Command is an excellent tribute to the men and machines of Coastal Command during the war. It will be of interest to all students of military aviation during World War 2..
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