Wings Over The Desert

'Great War RFC pilot Eric Seward survived being shot down (and an epic trek across the Sinai desert) besides five other major crashes. Told by his son, a well-known historian, his story recaptures the thrills and dangers of the pioneering age of air combat.' Book jacket.

The experiences of a captain flying, from 1976 to 1979, for a charter company indirectly owned by the Shah of Iran.

Experience the exciting combat tales of both Allied and Axis pilots around the world during World War II.Wings of War encompasses the World War II air war from late 1939 through 1945 and provides a chronological snapshot not only of famous and significant events from the global air war, but also of other lesser-known events that are equally thrilling and important. Over three dozen different Allied and Axis airplanes are featured, giving you a unique experience at the controls of a variety of World War II’s famed fighters, bombers, liaison, and jet airplanes.Here are just a few of the stories included about World War II aces from author Jim Busha’s vast archival research and interviews: ·A pilot that flew a P-36 against the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, while still in his Sunday pajamas. ·A B-25 pilot who launched off the USS Hornet along with his fellow Doolittle Raiders. ·P-40 pilots who flew against Rommel and his Afrika Korps. ·A PBY pilot helped locate and recover a downed Zero over the Aleutians, which was later used as a test bed to learn its deadly tricks. The action is truly global—from the skies over England, Greenland, mainland Europe, the African deserts, the CBI Theater, the entire Pacific Theater (including the Aleutians, Russia, Japan, and China), and many more—this is one book no fan of warbirds will want to miss!

There is a common but often unspoken arrogance on the part of outside observers that folk science and traditional knowledge—the type developed by Native communities and tribal groups—is inferior to the “formal science” practiced by Westerners. In this lucidly written and humanistic account of the O’odham tribes of Arizona and Northwest Mexico, ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea exposes the limitations of this assumption by exploring the rich ornithology that these tribes have generated about the birds that are native to their region. He shows how these peoples’ observational knowledge provides insights into the behaviors, mating habits, migratory patterns, and distribution of local bird species, and he uncovers the various ways that this knowledge is incorporated into the communities’ traditions and esoteric belief systems. Drawing on more than four decades of field and textual research along with hundreds of interviews with tribe members, Rea identifies how birds are incorporated, both symbolically and practically, into Piman legends, songs, art, religion, and ceremonies. Through highly detailed descriptions and accounts loaded with Native voice, this book is the definitive study of folk ornithology. It also provides valuable data for scholars of linguistics and North American Native studies, and it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans make sense of their world. It will be of interest to historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars of indigenous cultures and folk taxonomy.

This novel is about one young man, of Irish Catholic descent, growing up in San Francisco of emigrant Irish parents and entering WWII shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During his high school years he works, in his spare time, at the Fisherman’s wharf. He meets and falls in love with the daughter of a fishing boat skipper but one night as they are crossing the street to go to dinner at a small restaurant in the North Beach District a random bullet from China Town finds its mark in the chest of the girl he intends to build his life around and the event leaves the young man in state of anger and despair as the war breaks out. He joins the service and becomes a pilot of a B-26 medium bomber which eventually takes him to combat in Europe and his participation in the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. While recuperating from wounds and emotional exhaustion suffered from a bombing mission in France he meets and falls in love with an Irish girl. The book, itself, is a work of historical fiction but stays close to the factual history of the WWII era with special reference to the war in Europe and the part played by the Eighth U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force of Great Britain.

From 1941 through 1945, British cadets in the Royal Air Force trained in the United States through the Lend-Lease Act, President Roosevelt’s ingenious plan to help beleaguered Great Britain while maintaining the semblance of neutrality. This book tells the saga of two Florida training fields during this turbulent time. In their own words, British pilots tell of their Florida experiences. Many of them still in their late teens, away from home for the first time, pale and thin from years of rationing, these young men encountered immense challenges and overwhelming generosity during their training in Florida. Now retired, these former pilots still smell the scent of orange blossoms when they glance through the log books they kept while flying their Stearmans and Harvards over Florida citrus groves. They fondly remember the times when they buzzed over the homes of their Florida “families” to let them know to expect them for Sunday dinner. More than fifty years later, their stories still resonate with universal emotions: fear of failure, love of country, camaraderie, romantic love, and the pain of tragic deaths. Their stories also remind the American reader of a unique time in our history, when, poised on the brink of war, the United States reached out to help a country in distress.

The Gold family learns that the relatively peaceful period of the seventies is just as dangerous as wartime, when they face industry changes that threaten the existence of the powerful Gold Aviation empire.

WINGS OF FIRE comes to a thrilling conclusion in this action-packed finale! It all comes down to this: The Dragonets of Destiny must finally bring the epic war to an end, reconcile the seven tribes, and choose the next queen of Pyrrhia... and make it out alive.