L. Douglas Keeney

The invasion of Occupied Europe loomed but the battle against Nazi Germany was just in its infancy. Fighter production was on the rise, tanks were still rolling off the German production lines, and the early air attacks by the Allies had resulted in meager damage. Clearly a change was in order. In 1943, that change came about through the declaration of a Combined Bomber Offensive which called for the destruction of Germany by air. Long before American soldiers set foot on continental Europe, the...

The minute a plane ditched in the ocean, a clock started ticking – and it ticked fast. They were young, but not frivolous. They were battle hardened pilots, but not without soft spots in their hearts for home. They were scared, but not without courage. Presenting the true, never-before-published stories of American pilots and airmen shot down in WWII combat and now lost in the ocean struggling to survive until their rescuers arrived. Each story is told by the men themselves, pilots and airmen...

During the Eisenhower Administration, scientists sought a remote location where sensational military breakthroughs would remain national secrets. A pair of engineers in a single-engine plane over the Nevada desert spotted an abandoned airstrip near the dried-up bed of an ancient lake. The government referred to the wasteland as Paradise Ranch, but rumors that spread around the world called it by its map designation, Area 51. This is the only book that offers the CIA’s newly declassified...

World War II arrived at a time when airplanes were scarcely thirty years old. Engines were small, passenger capacity was limited and only the biggest of the flying boats had the fuel tanks and safety features necessary to cross the oceans. But war changed that quickly and within a year, bombers and fighters were routinely crossing the Mediterranean, the English Channel, and most daunting of all, the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Naturally, the odds caught up with them and planes crashed. In...