Name: Edwards Air Force Base
Brand: Ted Huetter
SKU: 9780738580777
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Ted Huetter

Edwards Air Force Base

9780738580777

$24.99

Known for more first flights and record flights than any other place, Edwards Air Force Base is legendary.

Centered around an ancient dry lakebed in the Mojave Desert 90 miles north of Los Angeles, activity at Edwards has sharpened the cutting edge of aviation and aerospace since the 1940s. The complex is a strategic flight test, research, and development center for the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and civilian contractors. Since the 1950s, almost every U.S. military aircraft has been partially tested here. The skies above Edwards have been the scene of remarkable achievements, including Chuck Yeager's world-famous breaking of the sound barrier in 1947. The base was first established near the small town of Muroc in 1933 and became renowned for its giant runways painted onto the flat, dry lakebed. Speed and altitude records were commonplace at Edwards during the 1950s. Suborbital space flights began there in the 1960s. In the 1970s it was the primary testing site for the space shuttle program. Dramatic aerospace research continues today at Edwards, America's proving ground for the future of high tech aviation.

Cover image for Edwards Air Force Base, isbn: 9780738580777

Mark A. Chambers

Naval Air Station Oceana Fleet Defenders

9781467108119

$23.99

Since 1950, US Navy fleet defender (fighter) squadrons—home-based at Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia—have served as a vital part of the country’s national defense and helped to exert global US naval firepower. Over the years, NAS Oceana–based fleet defender squadrons have participated in combat during the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf Wars and in military incidents and conflicts in Libya as well as Kosovo and Afghanistan. During the Cold War, NAS Oceana–based fleet defender squadrons served as crucial deterrents to the Soviet Union’s acts of aggression and provocation. More recently, NAS Oceana–based fleet defender squadrons have been highly engaged in the ongoing War on Terrorism, striking Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) targets in Iraq and Syria and Taliban targets in Afghanistan. Today, these squadrons stand ready to defend the United States, its naval fleets, and its interests abroad.

Cover image for Naval Air Station Oceana Fleet Defenders, isbn: 9781467108119

George Allen Larson

Whiteman Air Force Base

9781467128124

$24.99

Whiteman Air Force Base is located two miles south of Knob Noster. The base was activated following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming Sedalia Army Air Field in November 1942 to train glider pilots and paratroopers. In August 1951, the base was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, with the 340th Bombardment Wing flying the Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber and KC-97 tanker. The base was renamed in honor of 2nd Lt. George Whiteman, US Army Air Corps, who was killed in his P-40 by a Japanese Zero during the attack on Pearl Harbor. In June 1961, the Department of Defense chose Whiteman to host the nation's fourth Minuteman ICBM wing, with 150 missiles. Before completion of the missile field construction, SAC activated the 351st Strategic Missile Wing on February 1, 1963. The missile wing made history when it fielded the first female missile crew. In 1990, the base became part of history with the activation of the 509th Bomb Wing flying the Northrop B-2 Stealth Spirit bomber. Throughout its continuous military presence since 1942, the base has always been at the forefront of national defense, especially now with the B-2 able to strike any target in the world at any time.

Cover image for Whiteman Air Force Base, isbn: 9781467128124

Andre J. Swygert

Flight Training at the United States Naval Academy

9781467160421

$24.99

The United States Naval Academy was founded in 1845 in Annapolis, Maryland, after experience showed that the policy of training naval officers solely through shipboard experience was ineffective. The development of aircraft in the early 20th century was a technological change that impacted the academy. The efforts of naval aviation advocates, led by Capt. Washington I. Chambers, resulted in the Navy acquiring its first aircraft in 1911 and basing them near the US Naval Academy where sufficient land and material resources were available to support flight operations. Later, under Supt. Adm. Louis W. Nulton, aviation entered the curriculum as an element of fundamental naval education, taking a place among major subjects such as seamanship and gunnery. Classroom instruction and indoctrination flights provided all midshipmen with a familiarization in aviation as an important element in their development as naval officers before circumstances forced a shift of training to other facilities by 1962.

Cover image for Flight Training at the United States Naval Academy, isbn: 9781467160421

Mark Lardas

Ellington Field

9781467104807

$24.99

Ellington Field was one of 32 training airfields authorized by Congress in 1917. During World War I, it became one of the most highly regarded training fields in the United States, reaching a peak of 250 aircraft and 5,000 troops. From that peak, it experienced many ups and downs. Closed by 1940, it was reopened for World War II to conduct advanced aviation training. Closed again in 1946, it reopened for the Cold War as a combat and training air base. It then became NASA's airfield for Johnson Space Center. As the Cold War wound down, in 1984 Ellington became Houston's third municipal airport. From Jennies to jets, Ellington's story mirrors America's aviation history from 1917 to the 21st century.

Cover image for Ellington Field, isbn: 9781467104807

Lidia Hook-Gray

Liberal Army Airfield

9781467162289

$24.99

The southwest corner of Kansas was once home to Liberal Army Airfield. For 27 months, from April 1943 to September 1945, the desolate plains of Kansas were alive with the deep throaty roar of the B-24 Liberator.

The Liberal Army Airfield trained approximately one-quarter of all B-24 commanders. Residents of the area recall few days and nights in which they did not hear the familiar roar of the big Pratt & Whitney engines flying overhead. What was once a wheat field, a symbol of peace, became thousands of feet of concrete runways used to train pilots for vital World War II missions. To this day, many of the runways and structures of the base still survive. Years have passed since the inception and closure of the base, but its history will always be a part of Liberal, Kansas.

Lidia Hook-Gray was born in Liberal and raised in the adjacent Oklahoma Panhandle. A local history buff, she has always been intrigued by the Liberal Army Airfield, the big B-24s, the people that came to the base, and their stories. Hook-Gray is also the author of Liberal and Seward County. Connie Gray-Bowman was born in Liberal. Her father, Herbert Gray, flew 52 combat missions as a nose gunner on a B-24 with the 454th Bombardment Group, the Tailwind Crew. His last assignment was stationed at the Liberal base, where he met his wife at a USO dance.

Cover image for Liberal Army Airfield, isbn: 9781467162289

Starley Talbott

Wyoming Airmail Pioneers

9781625858641

$21.99

The story of the United States Transcontinental Air Mail Service, the first of its kind in the world, is one of romanticism and danger. Through calm or storm, in light or dark, a contingent of courageous couriers relayed the public mail across three thousand miles in less than a day and a half—faster than ever before. Though the U.S. Air Mail Service began on the East Coast, some of the frontier tales of the route through the Rocky Mountains were lost. The western leg of the airmail service from Chicago to San Francisco included the Mountain Division, headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The route through Wyoming, considered the most treacherous, provided harrowing tales of the pilots who risked their lives. Authors Starley Talbott and Michael Kassel lionize these folk heroes, aviation legends and icons of western history.

Cover image for Wyoming Airmail Pioneers, isbn: 9781625858641

Jim Gregory

Central Coast Aviators in World War II

9781467139526

$21.99

A tribute to the heroism shown by military pilots and aircrew from rural California towns who risked their lives and made their mark on American history.

During World War II, thousands of volunteer combat aviators trained at places like Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and Hancock Field in Santa Maria. Some air cadets and WASPs—young women pilots—lost their lives in training accidents. The graduates would go on to fight in both the Pacific and European theaters.

They faced flak bursts and collisions that resulted in horrifying explosions and were sent on strafing runs that made them targets in a lethal shooting gallery. Downed airmen encountered both unexpected kindness and cruel deprivation as prisoners of war.

Through interviews and official records, Jim Gregory tells the stories of heroic Central Coast veterans who fought a war that stretched from New Guinea to North Africa.

Cover image for Central Coast Aviators in World War II, isbn: 9781467139526

Billy Singleton

Alabama Aviation

9781467128414

$7.99

From early aerial experimenters who devoted their lives to the development of a heavier-than-air flying machine to the massive expansion of military flight training during the Second World War, the story of aviation in Alabama represents a remarkable historical legacy. In March 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright established the nation's first civilian flying school on the grounds of what would become Maxwell Air Force Base, the center for military aerospace education and airpower doctrine. The establishment of the Wright brothers' flying school represents the first of a series of extraordinary events that propelled Alabama to the forefront of the evolution of aviation as the foundation of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt's arsenal of democracy during the Second World War.