With World War II being a
world war, there were several "theaters" of operation throughout the world then by the militaries of the belligerent countries. Usually historians recognize four major theatres: the European, Pacific, Mediterranean, and China/Burma (sometimes "India" is added to that name) theatres. The two largest of those, and most well known, were, of course, the European and Pacific theatres.
Many Americans do not realize that our country fought in China/Burma in World War II. Yet, Americans fought bravely, were injured, and died just as in other parts of the world during the war. They faced just as many dangers and suffered just as much hardship (maybe more).
This very highly rated book is about American aviation in that area of the world during, and just before, those dark days of World War II. And it's really nice to see it marked down 86% from the
regular digital price.
China's Wings: War, Intrigue, Romance, and Adventure in the Middle Kingdom During the Golden Age of Flight. By Gregory Crouch. Rated 4.9 stars, from 90 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $30.00; regular(?) digital price $12.79; Kindle price now
$1.99. Bantam, publisher. 528 pages.
http://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Wings-I...+Age+of+Flight.
Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia
comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings
is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight.
At the center of the maelstrom is the book’s courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation’s flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; foreign minister T. V. Soong; Generals Arnold, Stilwell, and Marshall; and legendary Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe.
With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. Drawing on meticulous research, primary sources, and extensive personal interviews with participants, Gregory Crouch offers harrowing accounts of brutal bombing runs and heroic evacuations, as the fight to keep one airline flying becomes part of the larger struggle for China’s survival. He plunges us into a world of perilous night flights, emergency water landings, and the constant threat of predatory Japanese warplanes. When Japanese forces capture Burma and blockade China’s only overland supply route, Bond and his pilots must battle shortages of airplanes, personnel, and spare parts to airlift supplies over an untried five-hundred-mile-long aerial gauntlet high above the Himalayas—the infamous “Hump”—pioneering one of the most celebrated endeavors in aviation history.
A hero’s-eye view of history in the grand tradition of Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London
, China’s Wings
takes readers on a mesmerizing journey to a time and place that reshaped the modern world.