Fighter Pilot's Heaven presents the dramatic inside story of the American military's transition into the jet age, as told by a flyer whose life depended on its success. With colorful anecdotes about fellow pilots as well as precise technical information, Donald S. Lopez describes how it was to be “behind the stick” as a test pilot from 1945 to 1950, when the U.S. military was shifting from war to peacetime operations and from propeller to jet aircraft. An ace pilot who had served with Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tiger Fighter Group, Lopez was assigned at the close of World War II to the elite Proof Test Group of the Air Proving Ground Command. Located at Eglin Field (later Eglin Air Force Base) in Florida, the group determined the operational suitability of Air Force weapons systems and aircraft and tested the first operational jet, the P-80 Shooting Star. Jet fighters required new techniques, tactics, and weaponry. Lopez recounts historic test flights in the P-59, P-80, and P-84, among other planes, describing complex combat maneuvers, hair-raising landings in unusual positions, and disastrous crashes and near crashes. This memoir is peppered with lively accounts of many pilots and their colleagues, revealing how airmen coped with both exhilarating successes and sometimes tragic failures.

Based on the true story of World War II pilot Jim McCabe, "Return to Heaven" is one man's letter from the other side. It is a thrilling story of courage and faith; a soaring testimony of God's heavenly kingdom that inspires awe for the generations who have served our country... On a hot day in 1993, Jim McCabe smacked a perfect drive down the fairway in front of his old golfing buddies. He shook his head. After an encounter with God twelve years earlier during a heart attack, Jim now knew that same voice was calling him home again for good. As the small white ball bounced along, Jim stumbled back to the golf cart, looked at his old friends, and then slumped over dead. In war, Captain Jim McCabe was a fighter pilot during the heaviest Allied operations over Europe. Jim's combat missions included escorting the plane of General Eisenhower safely through Nazi skies, and unknowingly accompanying his own brother on a bombing mission over Germany. After being shot down in the Korean War, a harrowing search and rescue mission brought Jim safely home, back to his wife and family in postwar America. "Return to Heaven" picks up where Jim's death leaves off on the golf course. Jim experiences the rush of angels' wings as he is now escorted home again to eternity... leaving the reader with a thrilling faith-based account of the Kingdom of God.

"A fascinating "factional' insight into the lives of Luftwaffe fighter pilots during the Second World War. Gunther Bloemertz was one of the legendary 'Abbeville Boys'of Jagdgeschwader 26, who flew Focke Wulf FW 190 day fighters from their base in northern France. In this vivid personal story, Bloemertz describes life and death on the squadron, his fellow pilots and their almost daily duels with the RAF Spitfires and USAAF Flying Fortresses, fought at both ground level and in the stratosphere over the Pas de Calais ..."--Page 4 of cover

Into the Teeth of the Tiger provides a vivid, pilot’s-eye view of one of the most extended projections of American air power in World War II Asia. Lopez chronicles every aspect of fighter combat in that theater: harrowing aerial battles, interludes of boredom and inactivity, instances of courage and cowardice. Describing different pilots’ roles in each type of mission, the operation of the P-40, and the use of various weapons, he tells how he and his fellow pilots faced not only constant danger but also the munitions shortages, poor food, and rat-infested barracks of a remote sector of the war. The author also offers keen observations of wartime China, from the brutalities of the Japanese occupation to the conflict between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and the Communist movement. This edition of Lopez's acclaimed account features new photographs, most of which have never before been published. Relating how the 23rd Fighter Group continued to win battles even as the Japanese gained ground, Into the Teeth of the Tiger is the humorous and insightful memoir of an ace pilot caught in the paradox of victory in retreat.

The origins of Israeli air power.