WAR IN THE AIR. True Accounts of the 20th Century's Most Dramatic Air Battles--by the Men Who Fought Them

Presents twenty-six real-life accounts of aerial warfare, including "The Hero's Life" by Captain Eddie V. Rickenbacker" and "The Flight of Enola Gay" by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts

YA. A collection of stories that focuses on fighter pilots and the battles they fought rather than the planes they flew. Although the accounts start with the poorly trained pilots who flew the canvas-covered biplanes of the First World War and finish with the high-tech machines of the Vietnam War, most of the narratives are about World War II. Coonts places readers inside the cockpit with highly decorated American, British, German, and Japanese flyers. He concludes that technological advances and the end of the Cold War have doomed the "ace" to the annals of history. YAs will experience the same emotions as the pilots?ranging from the exhilaration of shooting down enemy aircraft to the terror of being caught inside a burning plane to the sorrow for lost comrades. This exciting book will appeal to both history buffs and general readers.?Robert Burnham, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Armchair aerial warriors will want to cinch up their seatbelts for Stephen Coonts's War in the Air: True-Life Accounts of the 20th Century's Most Dramatic Air Battles?by the Men Who Fought Them. The bestselling novelist (Flight of the Intruder) presents excerpts from 25 classic accounts of combat in the skies (from Frank Elkins's The Heart of a Man, from Ted W. Lawson's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, etc.), as well as one original piece, his own essay on the Vietnam exploits of "the last American ace," Air Force Captain Steve Richie.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A glorious medley celebrating heroes of yesteryear's aerial wars, compiled and annotated by the author of Flight of the Intruder (1986), etc. Coonts scoured the voluminous annals of military aviation, from WW I through Vietnam, collecting more than two dozen pieces detailing varied aspects of combat aloft. Predictably, he has excerpted the autobiographies of such storied American airmen as Eddie Rickenbacker, Ted Lawson, Robert L. Scott, and Gregory (Pappy) Boyington. No chauvinist, Coonts makes room for short takes recounting the airborne adventures of British (Ginger Lacey, Bob Tuck), German (Adolf Galland, Erich Hartmann), and Japanese (Saburo Sakai) aces (i.e., fliers with five or more kills). While dashing fighter pilots dominate the roster, bomber commands are also represented--most notably, by a somber recital that follows Paul Tibbets on his flight in a B-29 called Enola Gay to a rendezvous with history over Hiroshima. Also making the cut are the typically reckless souls at the control of helicopters that gave American soldiers unprecedented mobility in Southeast Asia and those who flew heavily armed Skyraiders on ground-support missions during the Korean conflict. In addition, Coonts (who contributes an essay on Steve Ritchie, the last US fighter pilot to gain five victories) rescues some genuine treasures from undeserved obscurity. One such is the vivid account of how in 1915 a young Royal Navy pilot became the first of his breed to shoot down a zeppelin. Fault-finders could carp that the anthology ignores the Russian women whose courage under fire in the skies above WW II's Eastern front came as a rude shock to the Luftwaffe, as well as their American sisters, who braved the Atlantic to ferry badly needed aircraft from US factories to Europe. This cavil apart, a generous selection of martial aeronautica, and an ad hoc history of the way of the warrior pilot. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Tom Clancy's Armored Cav (LJ 11/15/94) proved that technothriller fans will happily venture to nonfiction with their favorite authors. Here, Coonts (The Intruders, Pocket, 1994) offers accounts from real-life flyboys.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.