Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Following 9/11, a small band of Special Forces soldiers secretly entered Afghanistan and rode to war on horseback against the Taliban. Outnumbered forty to one, they pursued the enemy across the mountainous terrain and captured the strategic city of Mazari-Sharif. The bone-weary Americans were welcomed as liberators, and overjoyed Afghans thronged the streets. Then the action took an unexpected turn: the Horse Soldiers were ambushed.

During World War II, a group of American fighter pilots roamed the skies over China and Burma, menacing the Japanese war effort without letup. Flamboyant, daring, and courageous, they were called the Flying Tigers. The Tigers-who had been recruited from the Army, Navy, and Marines-first saw action as a volunteer group fighting on the side of the Chiang Kai-shek's China against Japan. Trained in the unconventional air-combat tactics of their maverick...

Over 250 rare photographs depict one of the greatest industrial feats of World War II: the massive production of American military aircraft. Photos show teams of workers turning out Boeing B-17 bombers in Seattle, huge B-24D Liberators at the Ford plant in Willow Run, F6F Grumman Hellcat fighters in Long Island, and much more.

On June 2, 1995, U.S. Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady was helping enforce the NATO no-fly zone in the skies over Bosnia when a Soviet-made antiaircraft missile slammed into his F-16. With the aircraft exploding around him, O'Grady desperately grabbed his ejection handle and pulled. Five miles up and traveling at 350 miles per hour, O'Grady had escaped certain death. But his ordeal was just beginning.

"Masters of the Air is a narrative history of the bomber war in World War Two. The U.S. had two air forces conducting strategic bombing in Europe during the war, the Eighth and the Fifteenth. The Eighth was the more powerful and was the one that bombed Germany. Masters of the Air is the story of the Eighth Air Force. The American bomber war began in the summer of 1942 with a strike by a dozen Flying Fortresses (B-17s), or "Forts," as they were called,...

In this remarkable WWII story by New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning, a renegade American pilot fights against all odds to rescue his family — imprisoned by the Japanese—and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way.
From the knife fights and smuggling runs of his youth to his fiery days as a pioneering naval aviator, Paul Irving "Pappy" Gunn played by his own set of rules and always survived on his wits and fists....

Relates the story of the author's life, during which he excelled in college football, became a top fighter pilot and squadron commander during World War II, and led and fought with fighter pilots during the Vietnam War.

The men of the 57th Bomb Wing flew out of Corsica during World War II and bombed vital bridges throughout Italy to sabotage German supply routes. Their missions were dangerous and never-ending. One bombardier in the wing was a young New Yorker named Joseph Heller, who would later turn his experience into the classic 1961 war novel Catch-22. Now aviation historian Thomas McKelvey Cleaver takes a closer look at the real-life men of the 57th, whose camaraderie...