Books about Anti aircraft from Amazon.com

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..
Price: $22.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Red SAM.
Price: $8.68 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Covers German anti-tank/assault aircraft: Bf 109, Fw 190, Ju 87, Ju 88, Hs 129, He 177 and others..
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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..
Price: $26.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Read the little known story of the World War II Army Anti-Aircraft units in the Pacific, and how they helped win the war.

ow and why one ack-ack battalion became known as the Bush Blasters
the men adapted to the danger, the heat, the rain, the mud, the mosquitoes, the misery and the boredom of life in the field.
strange and fascinating local customs of the New Guinea and Filipino people, from headhunting to John the Baptist.
ow the Filipino people continued to fight and survive during years of Japanese occupation, and how they reacted to the arrival of the Allies.
amazing hardships the Philippines endured, and how quickly conditions changed after the Allies arrived.
rs from home, and how the war was fought in the cornfields and feedlots of the Midwest, as well as at the front.
ing of the longings for home and the girls they left behind.
emories still linger fifty-seven years after the war.

"He has quite a talent for writing."
-W. H. Ownby, local draft board official

"By the way, Kenny informs me that I'm now a literary sensation in the field of journalism. It seems that the local readers of the Journal Gazette are being held breathless by some of my letters."
-Excerpt from one of John's letters.
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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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