Peter Mersky: 9 books

Although the Crusader was built first and foremost as a Navy interceptor, as has often been the tradition with US fighters, a photo-reconnaissance variant was also produced by Vought. The photo-bird's first operational test came in the autumn of 1962 when its overflights of Cuba alerted the world...

The Skyhawk was involved in Vietnam from the very beginning, including the first offensive operations in 1963 into Laos, and the Pierce Arrow operations immediately following the Tonkin Gulf Incident of August 1964. Navy and Marine Corps A-4s quickly established a presence in south-east Asia participating...

Arriving on station with the USS Ranger (CVA-61) in early December 1967, the first Corsair II squadron became operational immediatedly and sustained its first combat loss three weeks later. This book tells how the A-7 soon proved its worth supporting ground operations in South Vietnam. As it continued...

Known to its pilots as the 'last of the gunfighters' due to its quartet of Colt-Browning Mk 12 20 mm cannon, the F-8 Crusader was numerically the most populous fighter in the US Navy at the start of America's involvement in the Vietnam conflict in 1964 – some 482 F-8C/D/Es equipped 17 frontline...

Revered by Naval Aviators as the 'last of the gunfighters' due to its quartet of Colt-Browning Mk 12 20 mm cannon, the F-8 Crusader enjoyed great success against VPAF MiG-17s during the Rolling Thunder campaign of 1966–68. But, the MiG-17's unequalled low-speed manoeuvrability, small size and powerful...

This book is a long-awaited biography of one of the Navy’s last surviving World War II aces, and one of the Navy’s most respected officers of any period. Following a typical American mid-western boyhood, Whitey Feightner, like so many of his generation, was in the van of the huge group of young men...

Ted W. Lawsons classic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo appears in an enhanced reprint edition on the sixtieth anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Japan. One of the worst feelings about that time, Ted W. Lawson writes, was that there was no tangible enemy. It was like being slugged with a single punch in a...

This sixtieth-anniversary edition of the 1943 classic returns to print the exciting story of a U.S. Navy fighter squadron during the invasion of French North Africa in World War II. Lieutenants Wordell and Seiler, with the help of journalist Keith Ayling, vividly recount the exploits of their fellow...

Includes over 30 photos, maps and plans. The first major surprise of the post-World War II years came into play when in late June 1950, the United States found itself responding in crisis fashion to the North Korean invasion of the new republic of South Korea, just four years and nine months...