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Book Description
From bailouts to belly landings, flaming
cockpits to lurching carrier decks, here are the heroic tales of pilots
from all backgrounds, united by a desire to fight their country's
enemy to the finish. Drawn from a small corner of Tennessee, these
men flew in all theatres of combat, in every front-line fighter aircraft.
They soared to victory in the air--and fled from capture on the ground.
This is a memorable anthology of combat tales with great appeal
both for veterans and historians. From the Back Cover
All combat pilots reserve one story for fellow flyers and close friends. "We
prepared to attack--gun switches on, revolutions per minute high, fuel rich, sun
goggles down, and hand on trigger. We got in position for a high-side run on the
three nearest bombers. I rocked my wings and peeled off to make a run, and each
of the other three Wildcats followed one by one."--Bill Burch over Guadalcanal.
"The Zero began to flatten out. I fell in behind with all guns firing. The Zero
began smoking and what appeared to be a piece of cowling headed directly toward
me so I pulled up sharply to the left to avoid hitting the object, and when I
dropped my right wing to look down, no Zero was visible, only pieces."--Frank
Davis over Tinian. "I felt a terrific jolt and saw a big flash of fire. I was
only 15 or 20 feet off the ground and I didn't know exactly what had happened,
but I had to hold the stick clear over to the right to keep the plane from
rolling violently to the left. I checked my left wing and there was a gaping
hole in it just about where the insignia was supposed to be."--Herman Freeman
over Anzio. "I jettisoned the canopy, disconnected oxygen and radio connection,
as I recalled the procedures for bail out. One was to slow the airplane and dive
out toward the trailing edge of the left wing. I stood up, but there was fire
and molten aluminum coming back from the engine. I sat down, reconsidered my
bail out procedure, rolled the airplane over, and dropped out."--Tom Ridley over
Czechoslovakia. Here are 85 electrifying tales told by 33 men of The Middle
Tennessee WWII Pilots Association.
- Hardcover: 220 pages
- Publisher:
McGraw-Hill Professional; 1 edition (March 1, 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0070016496
- ISBN-13:
978-0070016491
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