Showing results for "eric hammel"

"An authoritative look at an event that has taken on a legendary status . . . [an] essential history for those wanting the truth behind the legend" ( Publishers Weekly).Joe Rosenthal's "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" photo is one of the best-known images of US war history—and a powerful symbol of patriotism. But the story of how the flag got there, and even the identity of the soldiers in the photo, has been muddied by history. Here, military historian Eric...

Using diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts, this vivid narrative brings to life the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal between August 20 and November 15, 1942.The battle of Guadalcanal was the first offensive operation undertaken by the US and its allies in the Pacific War. The three months of air battles between August 20, 1942, when the first Marine air unit arrived on the island, and November 15, when the last enemy attempt to retake...

Conceived as a visual record rather than a definitive history, The Steel Wedge is a substantial photographic archive—246 photos, many never before published—focused on the coming of age of U.S. Marine Corps tanks, tank destroyers, and armored amphibian tractors through the Pacific island-hopping campaign from earliest pre-war development to Okinawa in 1945.A slice of the Marine Corps experience in the Pacific Theater during World War II, The Steel Wedge employs explanatory captions...

AMBUSH VALLEYI Corps, Vietnam, 1967the Story of a Marine Infantry Battalion's Battle for SurvivalEric HammelIn the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnams northernmost military region, were doing eveything they could to lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base.Still fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to secure the combat basess endangered main supply route. On Septembe...

The American mid-1944 campaign in the Mariana Islands was an important strategic step that placed Tokyo and the rest of Japan’s industrial heartland within range of the new U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 very-long-range bombers. Once the islands were secured and the airfields were built, the army air forces in the Pacific could do to Japanese industry what their counterparts in Europe had been doing to German industry since mid-1943.Even though these important objectives in the Marianas ...

The American mid-1944 campaign in the Mariana Islands was an important strategic step that placed Tokyo and the rest of Japan’s industrial heartland within range of the new U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 very-long-range bombers. Once the islands were secured and the airfields were built, the new Twentieth Air Force could do to Japanese industry what its strategic counterparts in Europe had been doing to German industry since mid-1943.Even though these important objectives in the Marianas...

MUNDA TRAIL: The New Georgia Campaign, JuneAugust 1943 by Eric Hammel + Munda Trail is the dramatic, harrowing story of green American soldiers encountering for the first time impenetrable swamps, solid rain forests, invisible coconut log pillboxes, tenacious snipers tied into trees, torrential tropical rains, counterattack by enemy aircraft and naval guns, and the logistical nightmare of living and moving in endless mud. A carefully planned offensive quickly degenerates into isolated small-u...

FIRE IN THE STREETS : The Battle for Hue, Tet 1968 by Eric Hammel = The Tet Offensive of January 1968 was the most important military campaign of the Vietnam War. The ancient capital city of Hue was a key objective of the surprise Communist offensive, but when the North Vietnamese launched their massive invasion of the city, instead of the general civilian uprising and easy victory they had hoped for, they were faced with a U.S.South Vietnamese counterattack and a devastating battle of attrit...

The concept behind fractal geometry is extremely difficult to explain . . . but easy to see and enjoy. Eric Hammel, a professional author of military history books, is unable to explain fractals in a way that will be clear to anyone else, but most mathematicians can’t explain fractals in language most people can understand. The simplest explanation is that fractals are graphic representations of high-order mathematical formulas that repeat patterns to infinity.Don’t get hung up on t...

Aces At WarThe American Aces SpeakEric HammelAdding to his acclaimed The American Aces Speak series, combat historian Eric Hammel comes through with yet another engrossing collection of first-person accounts by American fighter aces serving in World War II, the Israeli War of Independence, the Korean War, and the Vietnam WarAs are the other four volumes, Aces At War is a highly charged excursion into life and death in the air, told by men who excelled at piston-engine and jet-engine aerial co...

ACES AGAINST GERMANYThe American Aces SpeakEric HammelIn the second volume of his critically acclaimed series, The American Aces Speak, military historian Eric Hammel brings fresh first person accounts from U.S. Army Air Corps fighter aces who blasted their way across the skies of North Africa, the Mediterranean, and northern and southern Europe in the great crusade against Hitler's vaunted Luftwaffe and other Axis air forces. Coupled with a concise historical overview of America's air war ag...

y late March 1945, the pathway to invasion of the southernmost major island of the Japanese archipelago, Kyushu, had been secured but for one necessary stepping stone American forces required to support their tactical air effort leading up to and overhead the projected invasion of Japan, set to begin in the autumn of 1945. The seizure of Okinawa and its airfields was vital to the land-based strategic bombing campaign that would precede and support the invasion of Japan and for close-in bas...