Washoe County Library System

An American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive. On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story. Moser was just twenty-two years old, a farm boy from...

A portrait of American fighter pilot John Boyd examines his distinguished military career during the Korean War and his postwar efforts to transform the American military with his revolutionary theories of conflict.

"The World War II air war in the Pacific needed tough men like Colonel Pappy Boyington and his Black Sheep Squadron. The legendary Marine Corps officer and his bunch of misfits, outcasts, and daredevils gave new definition to "hell-raising"on the ground and in the skies. Pappy himself was a living legendhe personally shot down 28 Japanese planes, and won the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. He broke every rule in the book in doing...

A biography of top fighter pilot and squadron commander Robin Olds--who arrived in Vietnam in 1966 to find a dejected group of pilots and motivated them by placing himself on the flight schedule under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them.

"For readers of Unbroken comes an unforgettable tale of courage from America's 'forgotten war' in Korea, by the New York Times bestselling author of A Higher Call. Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy's most famous aviator duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African American...

Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, both Navy pilots during the Korean War in 1950, come from different backgrounds: Hudner is a white New Englander, a son of privilege; Brown is an African American son of a sharecropper from Mississippi. When the two men join forces in Fighter Squadron 32, they forge a deep friendship at a time when racial inequality was prevalent in America. An unwavering commitment binds Tom and Jesse to each other...

"Five Nickels is the true story of Captain Steve Phillis, a decorated Air Force A-10 fighter pilot killed under heroic circumstances while trying to save his downed wingman on their thirtieth Desert Storm combat mission. On February 15, 1991, Captain Steve Phillis was leading his wingman, Lieutenant Rob Sweet, on their thirtieth combat mission of Desert Storm flying the A-10 Warthog. They were tasked with attacking Iraq’s vaunted Medina Division...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "ONE OF THE BEST AIR-COMBAT MEMOIRS OF ALL TIME"* BY "ONE OF THE MOST DECORATED PILOTS IN AIR FORCE HISTORY"† 151 combat missions 21 hard kills on surface -to -air missile sites 4 Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor 1 Purple Heart First into a war zone, flying behind enemy lines to purposely draw fire, the wild weasels are elite fighter squadrons with the most dangerous job in the Air Force One of the greatest...