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Informationen zum Autor Thirty years ago Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October , sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn.” From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013. John D. Gresham is an author, researcher, photographer, and game designer. He helped Tom Clancy write a bestselling series of nonfiction books about military units, including Submarine, Armored Cav, Fighter Wing, Marine, Airborne, Carrier, and Special Forces. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia. Klappentext The #1 New York Times bestselling master of the military genre puts readers right in the cockpit. Tom Clancy's explorations of America's armed forces reveal exclusive, never- before-seen information on the people and technology that protect our nation. Here, the acclaimed author takes to the skies with the U.S. Air Force's elite: the Fighter Wing. With his compelling style and unerring eye for detail, Clancy captures the thrill of takeoff, the drama of the dogfight, and the relentless dangers our fighter pilots face every day of their lives- showing readers what it really means to be the best of the best. This is the ultimate insider's look at an Air Force combat wing-the planes, the technology, and the people...with Tom Clancy behind the stick.In August 1914, a British aviator patrolling the skies above Mons, in Belgium, spotted the advance of von Kluck's German army toward the British Expeditionary Force. Interviewed for TV five decades later, the pilot recalled the reaction of senior officers when he reported the news . . . they didn't believe him. Pilots soon took cameras with them to give proof of their sightings to skeptical general officers whose vision was limited to the view from the ground. Before long, both sides were flying reconnaissance missions, and hostile aviators were firing pistols at one another. Then machine guns. And soon after that, aircraft were designed as aerial killers -- the first fighters. They were delicate, unstable constructs of wood and wire, usually underpowered by inefficient engines. But they could fly. And the learning curve was steep back then. One day, someone asked, "If you can hang one engine on an airframe, why not two, or even more? If you can see to shoot, you can see to drop a weapon, can't you?" Thus began the age of the bomber. It was the Germans at Verdun, in the bitter weather of February 1916, who first made actual the concept we now call airpower -- the systematic application of tactical aircraft to control a battlefield (the definition will change and develop). The objective was to seal off the battlefield from French aviation, denying the enemy the ranging eyes needed to see behind the German trench lines; and as it turned out, the plan didn't work terribly well. Still, others saw what the Germans tried, and recognized that it could be made to work. By the end of the war, aircraft were attacking infantry on the ground. And for the first time soldiers knew what field mice had long understood: The target of an aerial predator feels as much psychological burden as physical danger. Between the wars, a handful of visionary officers in Britain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United States grappled with the theory of airpower . . . and with its practical applications in the next, inevitable war. The most famous of these, the Italian Guilo Douhet, proposed the first great "philosophy" of airpower: Bomber and attack aircraft can reach far into the...
