Daniel Ford: 41 books

In 1941, Glen Edwards learned to fly in a fabric-covered biplane. Seven years later, he died in the crash of the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing, the Air Force’s most advanced jet warplane and forerunner of the B-2 Stealth bomber of today. As a combat pilot in North Africa and Italy during World War...

It's the summer of 1964. The bush hat, and not the steel helmet, is the favored headgear of the sixteen thousand American advisors in South Vietnam. They love their work, and they're very good at it. How can they possibly fail? Covering their war are a handful of foreign reporters, including novelist...

During World War II, in the skies over Rangoon, Burma, a handful of American pilots met and bloodied the "Imperial Wild Eagles" of Japan and in turn won immortality as the Flying Tigers. One of America's most famous combat forces, the Tigers were recruited to defend beleaguered China for $600 a month...

"What God abandoned, these defended / And saved the sum of things for pay."  In the bleak winter of 1941-1942, no American or British force could stem the tide in Southeast Asia, as the Philippines, Thailand, Malaya, and Singapore fell to the victorious Japanese. Only in Burma was there...

At the outbreak of war, the Curtiss P-40 was America's best fighter plane, though outclassed by the British Spitfire, the German Messerschmitt 109, and probably the Japanese Zero. But the United States could build them by the thousand. First France, then Britain, and finally China tried desperately...

John Boyd was arguably the greatest American military theorist since the sea power strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan at the turn of the 20th Century. Best known for his formulation of the OODA Loop as a model for competitive decision making, Colonel Boyd was also an original thinker in developing tactics...

This story began as a study of lofting or tossing nuclear weapons, known as"LABs," for Low Altitude Bombing system. I became fascinated with the notion of using the prop-driven Skyraider for this purpose, and the story evolved into an account of what it would have been like to drive this...

The Second World War -- the worst thing that ever happened! For Poland, the War began in September 1939 when Germany invaded from the west, and Russia from the east. Among their victims was a five-year-old named Basia Deszberg, whose father and brother were shot in the Katyn Forest massacres. Meanwhile...

Annie Crowley was one of eleven children born in the farmhouse at Kilnahone, outside the village of Ballygarvan in the County Cork. Their father died a few weeks after the youngest was born, and the eldest emigrated to Australia not long after. Annie was six at the time, and a pupil at Ballygarvan...

John Boyd was a fighter pilot in the Korean War, an instructor at the US Air Force Fighter Weapons School, and arguably America's greatest military thinker of the 20th Century. His concept of the OODA Loop helped guide the US military during two wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This 4000-word 'long...

Whether its the seat thats always saved for the local Old Boy the décor that looks like its been bought in a job lot from the heavy dark red fabric shop or the quiz team who insist on calling themselves Norfolk in Chance for the hundredth time British pubs follow a set of bizarre and baffling rules...

A group of Internet aviation fans once debated the subject of the worst fighter of World War II. Their hands-down favorite: the Brewster Buffalo. Two books are titled The World's Worst Aircraft. The Buffalo is the only fighter from any era to have a chapter in both of them. The Royal Air Force...

In June 1940, the U.S. Coast Guard set out to survey the coast of Greenland, the largest island in the world--and the coldest. A year and a half before the country entered the Second World War, the United States was looking for a place to put an airfield that would serve as a bridge to Europe. (For...

The Flying Tigers were the most famous fighter pilots ever to fly for the United States, yet officially they part of the Chinese Air Force. Who were these men, where did they come from, and what happened to them after their service with the American Volunteer Group? Novelist (and prize-winning...