This Last Mission

Author : Arnold Jones
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781628280166
Total Pages : 398 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Final Mission written by Arnold Jones and published by . This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JD was a First Lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps flying a B25 Mitchell during the war, but his life of service was a closely guarded secret for many years. During a road trip with his father, a young man learns about the heroic actions of his uncle, and the mission that contributed significantly to the history of World War II, and a top-secret technology developed then, for today's fighting forces. The story begins in the South Pacific and then shifts focus to Chicago's Navy Pier. Intrigue is afoot as the Germans and Japanese join forces in an attempt to destroy the ships that are supplying the United States Navy with newly trained aviators. The FBI is soon on the case and the investigation begins. As the story unfolds, budding romance intersects with political intrigue as two couples find themselves uniquely affected by their involvement with each other and the war. All the while, just below the surface, each struggles between the contrasting emotional demands of self-preservation and duty to country. What choices will they make and what is the legacy they will leave behind?

Author : Michel Paradis
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 150110473X
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Last Mission to Tokyo written by Michel Paradis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative account of the Doolittle Raids of World War II traces the daring Raiders attack on mainland Japan, the fate of the crews who survived the mission, and the international war crimes trials that defined Japanese-American relations and changed legal history.

Author : Jim Smith
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307419479
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Mission written by Jim Smith and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of the final American bombing mission of World War II and how it prevented a military coup that would have kept Japan in the war. How close did the Japanese come to not surrendering to Allied forces on August 15, 1945? The Last Mission explores this question through two previously neglected strands of late—World War II history, whose very interconnections could have caused a harrowing shift in the course of the postwar world. On the final night of the war, as Emperor Hirohito recorded a message of surrender for the Japanese people, a band of Japanese rebels, commanded by War Minister Anami's elite staff, burst into the palace. They had plotted a massive coup that aimed to destroy the recordings of the Imperial Rescript of surrender and issue false orders forged with the Emperor’s seal commanding the widely dispersed Japanese military to continue the war. If this rebellion had succeeded, the military would have proceeded with large-scale kamikaze attacks on Allied forces, costing huge casualties and just possibly provoking the Americans to drop a third atomic bomb on Japan over Tokyo–and continue to drop more bombs as Japanese resistance stiffened. Meanwhile, in the midst of an “end-of-war” celebration on Guam, Air Force radio operator Jim Smith and his fellow crewmen received urgent orders for a bombing mission over Japan’s sole remaining oil refinery north of Tokyo. As a stream of American B-29B bombers approached Tokyo, Japanese air defenses, fearing the approaching planes signaled the threat of a third atomic bomb, ordered a total blackout in Tokyo and the Imperial Palace, completely disrupting the rebels’ plans. Smith and his fellow crewmembers completed the mission, and a few hours later, the Emperor announced the surrender over Japan’s airwaves, dictating the end of the war. The Last Mission is an insightful piece of speculative investigation that combines narrative storytelling with historical contingency and explores how two seemingly unrelated events could have profoundly changed the course of modern history.

Author : Lisa Westwood
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813059984
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Final Mission written by Lisa Westwood and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2016-01-09 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world will always remember Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for their first steps on the moon, yet few today hold in respect the sites that made these and other astronauts' journeys possible. Across the American landscape and on the lunar surface, many facilities and landing sites linked to the Apollo program remain unprotected. Some have already crumbled to ruins--silent and abandoned. The Final Mission explores these key locations, reframes the footprints and items left on the moon as cultural resources, and calls for the urgent preservation of this space heritage. Beginning with the initiation of the space race, the authors trace the history of research, training, and manufacturing centers that contributed to lunar exploration. From the early rocket test stands of Robert H. Goddard, to astronaut instruction at Meteor Crater, to human and primate experiments at Holloman Air Force Base, innumerable places proved critical to developing the equipment for exploring space, surviving the journey, and returning to Earth safely. Despite their significance to the history of human spaceflight, many landmarks face the threat of damage or destruction. Most alarming is that the rapid advancement of technology renders stations obsolete long before they are deemed worthy of preservation. Moreover, the lack of precedence for protecting off-planet artifacts poses a unique challenge for space archaeology. While NASA's 2011 recommendations for spacefarers suggest avoiding close proximity to this cultural landscape, the authors advocate stronger routes of preservation and present models for safeguarding space history--both on Earth's surface and beyond.

Author : Dawn Trimble Bunyak
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 9780806137179
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Our Last Mission written by Dawn Trimble Bunyak and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable tale of courage, historian Dawn Trimble Bunyak recounts the experiences of her uncle, Lawrence Pifer, a technical sergeant who survived fourteen months of internment as a prisoner of war in World War II Nazi Germany. A radio operator and ball turret gunner on the American B-17 bomber Slightly Dangerous, Pifer was shot down during a raid on March 4, 1944. As he parachuted from the plummeting plane, Pifer witnessed the deaths of two of his fellow crewmembers. Captured by Nazi soldiers and taken to a series of German Stalag Luft camps, Pifer and other servicemen-mostly in their teens and twenties-endured torture, starvation, disease, and forced marches. When British forces liberated Pifer's group, he pushed his POW experiences deep into the recesses of his mind, not to recall them in detail for decades. Years later, a POW group at a Veterans Administration hospital helped Pifer realize that he was ready to tell his story. After forty hours of interviews with Pifer, Dawn Trimble Bunyak retells the enthralling story of an average enlisted man's struggle to survive in the face of hopelessness, with only his strong faith and pride in country to sustain him. In his foreword, historian Arnold Krammer shows how popular views of the prisoner-of-war experience have changed dramatically over time yet how rare are such first-person accounts as Pifer's. Enhanced by numerous photographs and maps and an appendix of prisoners' poetry, Our Last Mission is one of only a few oral histories that details the daily experiences of one of the 94,000 American POWs in Europe during World War II.

Author : Ed Darack
Publisher : Smithsonian Institution
ISBN 13 : 1588345904
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Final Mission of Extortion 17 written by Ed Darack and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 6, 2011, a U.S. Army CH-47D Chinook helicopter approached a landing zone in Afghanistan 40 miles southwest of Kabul. The helicopter, call sign Extortion 17, was on a mission to reinforce American and coalition special operations troops. It would never return. Insurgents fired at the Chinook, severed one of its rear rotor blades, and brought it crashing to the ground. All 38 onboard perished instantly in the single greatest moment of sacrifice for Americans in the war in Afghanistan. Those killed were some of the U.S.'s most highly trained and battle-honed commandos, including 15 men from the Gold Squadron of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known popularly as SEAL Team 6, which had raided a Pakistan compound and killed Osama bin Laden just three months earlier. The downing of Extortion 17 spurred a number of conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the shootdown was revenge for bin Laden's death. In The Final Mission of Extortion 17, Ed Darack debunks this theory and others and uncovers the truth behind this mysterious tragedy. His account of the brave pilots, crew, and passengers of Extortion 17 and the events of that fateful day is interwoven into a rich, complex narrative that also discusses modern joint combat operations, the history of the Afghan war to that date, U.S. helicopter use in Afghanistan, and the new and evolving military technologies and tactics being developed to mitigate such tragedies now and in the future. Amazon Best History Book of the Month - September 2017

Author : Bill Boyce
Publisher : Bright Sky Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9781931721110
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Miss Fortune's Last Mission written by Bill Boyce and published by Bright Sky Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When you were growing up, did you ever wonder why your father was the way he was? Did you ever take time to discover what he had been through? Bill Boyce did. In Miss Fortune's Last Mission he shares his search to discover how WWII affected his dad--and the extended family created from one plane's crew"--Publisher summary.

Author : Dennis R. Okerstrom
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 0826219489
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Final Mission of Bottoms Up written by Dennis R. Okerstrom and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-10-28 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 18, 1944, the end of the war in Europe finally in sight, American co-pilot Lieutenant Lee Lamar struggled alongside pilot Randall Darden to keep Bottoms Up, their B-24J Liberator, in the air. Over Pula in what is now Croatia, they were once more hit by German fire. Lamar all but surrendered to death before fortuitously bailing out and being captured. in 2006 Lamar received an email from Croatian archaeologist Luka Bekic who had discovered the wreckage of Bottoms Up.

Author : Joseph M Scalia
Publisher : Naval Institute Press
ISBN 13 : 1612515258
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Germany's Last Mission to Japan written by Joseph M Scalia and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When U-234 slipped out of a Norwegian harbor in March 1945 destined for Japan, it was loaded with some of the most technically advanced weaponry and electronic detection devices of the era, along with a select group of officials. En route, word came that Germany had surrendered, and the boat's commander suddenly found himself with a rogue submarine, a precious assortment of cargo, and two Japanese naval officers still at war. This dramatic account of the voyage offers an intriguing look at the individuals involved. One of these individuals was Luftwaffe General Ulrich Kessler, who was a member of Von Stauffeberg's Valkyrie conspiracy to assassinate of Hitler. Kessler was aboard U-234 to escape the wrath of Hitler, because he had been tabbed by Von Stauffeberg to replace Hermann Goering as the commander of the Luftwaffe. Scalia draws on U.S. Navy interrogation records, European and Japanese archives, and interviews with former U-234 crew members and other principals to develop a full portrait of the group. He also evaluates the technology of the armament on board, which included 560 kg. of uranium oxide, whose presence continues to provoke questions about a Nazi plan to build an atom bomb in Japan.

Author : Gregory A. Freeman
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 9780230120273
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.7X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the famed Nuremberg Tribunal, there was Rüsselsheim, a small German town, where ordinary civilians were tried in the first War Crimes Trial of World War II. As the tide of World War II turned, a hitherto unknown incident set a precedent for how we would bring wartime crimes to justice: In August 1944, the 9- man crew of an American bomber was forced to bail out over Germany. As their captors marched them into Rüsselsheim, a small town recently bombed to smithereens by Allies, they were attacked by an angry mob of civilians -- farmers, shopkeepers, railroad workers, women, and children. With a local Nazi chief at the helm, they assaulted the young Americans with stones, bricks, and wooden clubs. They beat them viciously and left them for dead at the nearby cemetery. It could have been another forgotten tragedy of the war. But when the lynching was briefly mentioned in a London paper a few months later, it caught the eye of two Army majors, Luke Rogers and Leon Jaworski. Their investigation uncovered the real human cost of the war: the parents and a newlywed wife who agonized over the fate of the men, and the devastating effect of modern warfare on civilian populations. Rogers and Jaworski put the city of Rüsselsheim on trial, insisting on the rule of law even amidst the horrors of war. Drawing from trial records, government archives, interviews with family members, and personal letters, highly-acclaimed military historian Gregory A. Freeman brings to life for the first time the dramatic story. Taking the reader to the scene of the crime and into the homes of the crew, he exposes the stark realities of war to show how ordinary citizens could be drawn to commit horrific acts of wartime atrocities, and the far-reaching effects on generations.