No Less Than Victory - A Novel of World War II

Zusatztext “[An] incisive portrait of war . . . Jeff Shaara [is] one of the grand masters of military fiction.” —BookPage   “A powerful evocation of the war in Europe . . . impossible to put down until the very end.”— Huntington News Network   “Fans of military fiction will definitely gobble this up.” —Publishers Weekly   “Vividly portrays the war’s final act.” —Pensacola News Journal Informationen zum Autor Jeff Shaara Klappentext The magisterial conclusion to Shaara's World War II trilogy vividly portrays the European war's last act! from the Battle of the Bulge to Germany's unconditional surrender--told through the viewpoints of the men at the top! including Eisenhower! Patton! Churchill! and Hitler. 1. THE BOMBARDIER Bassingbourn Airfield, Near Cambridge, England November 14, 1944 He was already cold, ice in both legs, that same annoying knot freezing in his stomach. The plane shimmied sideways, and he rocked with it, felt the nose go up, could see the ground falling away, the B-17 climbing higher, steeper. Just in front was another plane, and he could see the tail gunner, moving into position, facing him. They were barely three hundred feet above the ground when the plane in front began to bank to the left, and his plane followed, mimicking the turn. Out to the side, the predawn light was broken by faint reflections of the big bombers just behind and to the right, doing the same maneuver. There were sparks from some of the big engines, unnerving, but the mechanics had done their job, and once full daylight came, the sparks would fade away. They continued to climb, as steeply as the B-17 would go without stalling, every pilot knowing the feeling, that sudden bucking of the nose when the plane had begun to stop flying. But the bombardier could do nothing but ride. During takeoff, he was only a passenger, the pilot in the cockpit above him doing his job. He leaned as the plane banked into a sharper angle, knew they were circling, still close to the plane in front, more moving up with them. Some were already above, the first to take off, but they had disappeared into thick cloud cover, his own now reaching the dense ceiling, the plane in front of him barely visible. Wetness began to smear the Plexiglas cone in front of him, heavy mist from the clouds. In training, he had been told that the bombardier had the best seat in the plane, as far forward as you could sit, right in the nose, a clear view in every direction but behind. Even the pilot couldn’t see downward, had to rely on the planes flying in formation beneath him to keep their distance. But in the dense cloud cover, there was nothing to see, streams of rain still flowing across the Plexiglas, and now, blindness, the clouds thicker still, no sign of the plane in front of him at all. Behind him to the left sat the navigator, silent as well, staring into his instruments. The blindness in front of them was annoying, then agonizing, the plane still shimmying, small bounces in the rough air, the pilot using his skills to keep his plane at precisely the attitude of those around him. The bombardier leaned as far forward as his safety belt would allow, searched the dense gray above them for some break, the first signs of sunlight, made a low curse shared by every American in the Eighth Air Force. British weather . . . There had been nothing unusual about this mission, the men awakened at four in the morning, a quick breakfast, then out to the massive sea of planes. The preparation and inspection of the plane had been done by the ground crew, always in the dark, men who did not have the flight crew’s luxury of sleeping as late as four. But as they gathered beside their own bird, eight of the ten-man crew pitched in, working alongside the ground crew for the final preparation, while the pilot and copilot perched high in the cockpit ran through their c...

Product details

• Authors: Jeff Shaara
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.06.2010
• EAN: 9780345497932
• ISBN: 978-0-345-49793-2
• No. of pages: 480
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 27 mm
• Series: World War II; World War II
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature