Aces In Combat

ACES IN COMBAT

The American Aces Speak



Eric Hammel



Adding to his acclaimed in-the-cockpit series, The American Aces Speak, combat historian Eric Hammel comes through with yet another engrossing collection of first-person accounts by American fighter aces serving in World War II and the Korean War.



As in the other four volumes, Aces In Combat is a highly charged excursion into life and death in the air, told by men who excelled at piston-engine and jet-engine aerial combat and lived to tell about it. It is an emotional rendering of what brave airmen felt and how they fought in the now-dim days of America’s living national history.



View the Battle of Midway through Lieutenant Jim Gray’s eyes as he must balance the needs of fellow pilots against the needs of his nation. Share the fear with Captain Charlie Sullivan as would-be rescuers deep in the New Guinea jungle attempt to turn him into a blood sacrifice. Crew a Canadian Mosquito night fighter as Lieutenant Lou Luma stalks the wily Hun—and bags an ace—over an airfield deep in Germany. Share Lieutenant Bud Fortier’s and Major George Loving’s grief when, on missions nearly eight years apart, they look on helplessly as trusted wingmen dive to their deaths in treacherous ground-attack runs. And watch anxiously as Captain Tom Maloney hovers between life and death for ten lonely days after stepping on a mine on an enemy-held beach.



These are America’s eagles, and the stories they tell are their own, in their very own words.