D.A. Kinsley's masterfully written history, They Fight Like Devils: Stories From Lucknow During The Great Indian Mutiny, 1857-58, is a vivid and accurate account of a bloody and ruthless conflict when violent rebellion arose against the British rule in East India. In the city of Lucknow, 3,000 British soldiers and civilians endured a siege of 30,000 mutineers. Surrender was not an option, for another British garrison at Cawnpore had surrendered and been massacred to the last person. Highly recommended for anyone with a strong interest in 19th Century East India history during the era of British rule, They Fight Like Devils is a violent, grim, and compelling look at a turbulent historical conflict.

This is a wonderful book detailing the fight of the P-51 against the Luftwaffe and Japanese. Hess did an excellent job expressing the experiences of P-51 pilots while defending the USA and the rest of the free world. He gave the P-51 the recognition it surely desrves.

This book has some stories about bomber crews but not as many as I would like.

Excellent book on all the big bombers,it's all here,excellent photos. Very nice.

This book is full of excellent photos of three of the main bombers in World War II. It is set up so that each plane has its own section with a seperate author. The text is good as an introduction but what really makes this a good book are the photos. It's hard to find such a nice book at such a reasonable price and I recommend it.

This 140-page volume provides detailed accounts of some of the 8th Air Force's most hazardous and costly missions during World War II. Through post-mission debriefs, interviews with aircrews from both the United States and Germany, and extracts from official unit records, William Ness provides insights to the units' horrible and sometimes bizarre experiences.

My only criticism of this book is that at times it is a little monotonous, with long recitations of loss figures and lists of KIAs. However, this is a very minor problem in an otherwise very good book.

Hell In The Heavens: Ill-Fated 8th Air Force Bomb Group Missions was created in England in 1942 by Brigadier General Ira C. Eaker for the specific purpose of daylight bombings over Europe. B-17s, and later B-24s were used with the expectation of a minimum of casualties due to either the German Luftwaffe or anti-aircraft fire. Despite advice from the British Royal Air Force that such an air campaign was doomed to fail, the initial operation took to the air on August 17, 1942. Eleven B-17Es went out to bomb rail yards in Rouen France. It was the beginning of one of the bloodiest air assault strategies to be employed by the Americans. William Hess' historical account of the air campaigns against Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Berlin, Rostock, Brux, Politz, Kassel, Magdeburg and other targets is nothing less than riveting. Hell In The Heavens is a superbly researched and presented contribution to the growing library of military literature concerning the Allied campaigns in the European theatre.

Thunderbolt! is ace pilot Major Robert S. Johnson's own account of his days with the celebrated 56th Fighter Group over Europe during World War Two. Johnson's very personable narrative takes the reader from his boyhood days in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his fascination with aviation first developed, through flying lessons, his enlistment and training with the air force, and his many missions over Germany behind the stick of a P-47 Thunderbolt.

The cockpit of the large, sturdy and power Republic P-47 is the setting for a large portion of the book. Missions flown over Germany against the deadly Luftwaffe pilots and their superb planes are covered in the first person in gripping fashion. Though his recollection of events after ten years cannot be completely accurate, the author nonetheless describes tense battles in remarkable detail, down to the combat technique of each adversary. Besides his own experiences, the author also relates hair raising stories of colleagues who ditched at sea, bailed out over enemy territory, suffered catastrophic equipment failures or were in fact killed.

Though military pilots are often categorized as arrogant and self-centred (necessary traits as the split-second demands of aerial combat require the pilot to be unhindered by self-doubt), Johnson's storytelling is uniquely free of pretense and self-adulation. In fact, using his easy and informal writing style, Johnson has included his misfortunes and blunders for the reader's amusement. It should be said however, that Johnson's descriptions of battle are a little too fond, and he sounds entertained by killing. A disappointment is that Johnson does not tell curious readers what personal qualities, habits, or techniques he thinks caused his spectacular twenty-eight vietories with zero planes lost. The book also lacks the technical content which a nostalgic reader would enjoy.

Thunderbolt! is an enjoyable autobiography of an otherwise ordinary boy who, despite failures, went on to become a very gifted pilot. Perhaps Johnson's story says what kinds of fellows a large number of Air Force youths were, and so gives a more personal description of the military pilot to supplement one's historical knowledge.

Bob Johnson describes more than the P-47, he describes the men who flew them and the things they did to get into battle. Johnson, a top scoring ace, in the league with Dick Bong and Eddie Rickenbacher failed the gunnery test at the end of fighter school with a score of 4.7 percent but was sent to battle with his unit. In his first battle he pulled off, thinking his plane had a problem because he had never fired all six of the guns on the plane at one time. He tells of how men died when the P-47 went into compressibility dives, a condition unknown before and how they met the ME-109 and FW-190 fighters, head to head and won. He tells how he came to love the fighter that could bring him back, with hundreds of bullet holes and some cannon shells imbedded in the seat armor, certain death for the pilot in most planes. But not in the heavy P-47.

This book covers World War 2 in the Pacific from the view of the Army Air Forces. Although it sometimes is as dry to read as a history text, the anecdotes of the feats of the pilots lead the reader to believe that the advantage of the American pilots in the air was team tactics and using the equipment on hand correctly. For the WWII history buff who generally sees the war in the Picific as a war of carriers, this book gives an additional point of reference to consider. The war in the Pacific is covered chronologically, but events of import of the war at sea are given less space due to the Army perspective (the Battle of Midway only recieved a page and a half, whereas the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto received much more). A bonus of the book is an annex which is a tactics manual written by the second highest scoring ace, Thomas P. McGuire.

Marion Havelaar has combined the essential elements of an outstanding history volume. He provides excellent photography (black and white), a well written chronology, and appendices with the details of individual aircraft, missions, and crews. This is not one of those "coffee table" books. It is packed with information and it is both excellent reading and study data. There are 264 pages in this volume and Mr. Havelaar has established a detailed history from a personal, statistical and photographic perspective which make this not only informative but also a very interesting book to read. This is a must-have book for any serious fan of World War 2 bombing operations, but specifically for the famous 91st Bomb Group in WW2.

This book seemed to me nothing more than a scrap collection of combat reports thrown together. The author gives no indication about what happened behind the 56's curtains. He tells no intersting tales which got into the unit's folclore. It is coldly written, and doesn't even bothered to check the enemy side. Bad job!

The author has done a good job of providing a very detailed account of the flying/fighting history of the 56th FG in WWII. This book is loaded with actual combat accounts from the pilots and general discriptions of daily sorties...actually, that's primarily all the book is. If you're looking for something on Zemke himself, this probably isn't the book for you. The author takes a more general approach, detailing each kill of this historical fighter group and never really concentrating on any one pilot to any substantive degree. The author also provides a detailed Appendix with, among other things, a complete breakdown of the kills of the 56th (including planes destroyed, buy who, and on what day). Thus it serves as both a good "read" generally as well as a handy reference source. The only complaint I have with the book is that the writing is somewhat cumbersome in that it reads like a reference manual at times.

This is a very good book, but author William Hess makes one mistake: in the beginning, the American pilots are learning how to fight their inexperience in aerial gunnery and air combat; the next moment, the German pilots seem to be stupid and begin falling like flies from the sky under the guns of the 56th!!! This lead us to a point: we will never know how the outcome of the air battles over Germany would be, if the numbers were more or less equal on each side. Another thing missing in the Apendix is the number of missions flown by each pilot in the Group (at least the aces listed) and the total of casualties and prisoners of war. The good point is, as always, the reports from the pilots theirselves.

Horrible. I think it would have been better for myself to have read directly the combat reports from the American fighter squadron's diaries. Hess writes in a cold style, that it's not echnical nor real: it's just cold and borign. I'll never read nothing from him again. THe books in the "OXSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES" are much, much better. Hess should read them.

This author, William Hess, does always the same thing (see "ZEMKE'S WOLFPACK", the history of 56th Fighter Group): he takes the combat reports written by the pilots and publish them, with no particular insight, no human side to the history, no strategic comments. The result is an endless and boring reading of air combats after air combats. Argh!

As a student of German World War II history I have to say I was somewhat disappointed in this book. However, if one is interested in the subject area covered by this book, and has a clear understanding of the author's point of view, it is an acceptable addition to the World War II history buff's library.

The book was written by William Hess, who is the official historian for the American Fighter Aces Association. It is made up largely of accounts taken (not surprisingly) directly from American fighter pilot combat reports and U.S. Army Air Force Records. The book retells the stories of numerous combats between U.S. pilots and German Jet and Rocket propelled aircraft, almost exclusively from the American prospective.

Hess almost completely fails to discuss the strategic importance or effect that the German jets had on the war or could have had had they been introduced by the Germans somewhat earlier than they were. I found a disappointing lack of information about the development of the German jet and rocket aircraft or about the training or lack thereof of the German pilots who flew the jets. This whole aspect was covered in the first eighteen pages of the book. There was painfully little discussion of the German manufacturing process, the technical aspects of the German planes, or the politics surrounding their use and deployment.

This book is filled by-in-large with first person combat reports by American pilots, and one is given only the most limited tactical view of the significance of these combats. The only lesson I learned from this book is that by the time the jets appeared in any numbers the Allies had such overwhelming airsuperiority over Europe that the Luftwaffe had no hope of making any impact on the course of the war regardless of the planes the German pilots flew.

This book, though somewhat small is nicely bound in black leather (or something that looks like leather), it contains 159 pages of text and numerous black and white photos, mostly of pilots. A more accurate title would have been "The U.S. Army Air Force Versus German Jets: The American pilot's perspective". The writing style of the book is easy to read and with all the first person combat reports it is somewhat exciting reading and moves along quickly. If you're looking for a basic introduction to this material, its a worthwhile investment. If you're looking for an in depth, balanced examination of the subject matter you'll probably be disappointed.

Take the combat logs from squadrons then all fo a sudden you've got a book to publish. This is the scheme Hess uses over and over again. The result in this one was, once again, another bureoucratic book, without life, without passion.

Another misfire by Hess, who only know to take the combt reports from the Fighter Grouops war diaries and then publish them. There[s no insight, no human side to the history. Sad.

Hess writes in a gruesome manner, totally "cold", only copying the combat records from the fighter Squadrons. He gives us no inner feeling the pilots had, no funny comments or details, nothing!