James H. Hallas Livres

The experiences of American soldiers as they trained for war, voyaged to France, and faced combat on the Western Front in 1917-18.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Aviation Chief Ordnanceman John W. Finn, though wounded, continued to man his machine gun against the waves of Japanese attacks around Pearl Harbor. Just over three years later, as World War II struggled into its final months, a B-29 radioman named Red Erwin died to save his fellow crewman in the skies near Japan. They were the first and last of thirty U.S. Navy, Army, and Marine Corps aviation personnel awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions against the Japanese. They included pilots and crewmen manning fighters and dive-bombers and flying boats and bombers. One was a general. Another was a sergeant. Some shot down large numbers of enemy aircraft in aerial combat. Others sacrificed themselves for their friends. Fly Boy Heroes is the story of the Pacific theater of World War II through the men who received the Medal of Honor in the air war against Japan. They served in U.S Army air squadrons, on U.S. Navy carriers, in U.S. Marine Corps air units. Who were these now largely forgotten men? Where did they come from? What inspired them to rise "above and beyond"? What, if anything, made them different? Virtually all had one thing in common: they always wanted to fly. They came from a generation that revered the aces of World War I, like Eddie Rickenbacker, the civilian flyer Charles Lindbergh, and the lost aviator Amelia Earhart--and then they blazed their own trail during World War II.

James Hallas reconstructs the full panorama of the Battle of Saipan in a way that no recent chronicler has done. In its comprehensiveness, attention to detail, scope of research, and ultimate focus on the men who fought and won the battle, this is the definitive military history of Saipan, a turning point of the Pacific War.

When the smoke cleared on Iwo Jima in March 1945, 19,000 American Marines had been wounded and 7,000 were dead, a casualty rate of nearly 39 percent. Lasting over a month, Iwo was the Marines' bloodiest battle of the war and the only Pacific battle in which a U.S. landing force suffered more... číst celé