P-47C-2-RE Side view - S/N 41-6182
P-47M-1 3/4 front view - S/N 42-21159
Fw-190D (long nose)
Me-110
Me-262
P-51D
F-86 Sabres Korea
They were outnumbered and underrated. They were fresh from the training fields in American and ordered to fight an enemy that had rewritten the book of war and brutally controlled a continent and the air above it. But the men of the 56th fighter group had courage and, more importantly, they had the P-47 Thunderbolt. This is the incredible story of the U.S. 56th Fighter Group as told by one of its best pilots, Robert S. Johnson, who would rack up a score of twenty-eight kills against the Luftwaffe and become one of America's top aces - one of a special breed of men who changed the course of history.
A B-17 niche book is Pride of Seattle: The Story of the First 300 B-17Fs by Steve Birdsall. A production of Squadron Signal, the book is in the Squadron format with numerous large and detailed black and white photos, accompanied by eight pages of full-color artwork profiles of aircraft. The meat of the book are the brief histories of each of the first 300 B-17Fs that rolled from the Boeing production line. Included in this number are some better known B-17s such as "Memphis Belle" and "Hell's Angels." No doubt this group of B-17Fs bore the brunt of the early European air war and it is interesting to read about these aircraft and their ultimate fates.
Australian Steve Birdsall is well known in B-17 book circles, having written a number of histories about the early combat airplanes in service. The first book I saw by Steve was back in the mid-1960s entitled "B-17 Flying Fortress" and was part of the series put together by Len Morgan. A 1968 title was "Hell's Angels" put out by Grenadier, probably the first 'nose art' book and actually better than most of the succeeding attempts. He's written a number of other books about various other aircraft but he seems to have specialized in the B-17. In any event, "Pride of Seattle" is up to the standard and provides that extra bit of detail on particular B-17Fs that comes in handy when looking at a photograph or pondering the fate of a particular airplane.