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Ira Penaluna, First World War pilot, sees his airline go bankrupt in Africa and grabs at the chance to instruct pilots in China. But Ira hasn’t reckoned on the beat-up, burnt-out wrecks he is expected to teach his students in, or on the fact that his pupils speak no English. Though aided and abetted by an enthusiastic assistant, an irresponsible Fagan and his brooding American girlfriend Ellie, Ira finds himself playing a deadly game, becoming embroiled in China’s civil war. The four are forced to flee but the only way out is in a struggling pile of junk flown precariously towards safety. Will they make it? -
Charles Walter Scully, cut off from his unit and running on empty, is trapped. It's 1944 and though the Allied invasion of France has finally begun, for Scully the war isn't going well. That is, until he meets a French boy trying to get home to Paris. What begins is a hair-raising journey into the heart of France, an involvement with the French Liberation Front and one of the most monumental events of the war. -
Naples, 1943. Looted by the Germans, the British, the Americans and the partisan bandits, its priceless art treasures the prize of the unscrupulous, the criminal and the crazed. Under orders from Field Security, Tom Pugh has to save the paintings of Detto Banti. At any cost. He does not know why - or how... -
The Eighth Army tenses itself for the Alamein offensive - drive the Germans from North Africa. Success depends on starving the Panzers of the Afrika Korps of fuel. Lieutenant-Colonel George Hockold must destroy Rommel’s vast fuel reserves stored at the port of Qabar if the Eighth Army is to succeed in the Alamein offensive. Time is desperately running out, resources are scant and the commando unit Hockold must lead is a rag-tag band of misfits scraped from the dregs of the British Army. They must attack Qabar. The orders are clear...Take or destroy. -
The story of the evacuation of Dunkirk. Trapped between the German army and the sea, the Allies face defeat. May will die, many are wounded or captured. But in only nine days over a quarter of a million men are back in England, saved by the citizens who went to sea to rescue their army. -
France, 1944. The bombing mission had gone well. The Lancaster bomber crew began to relax, then the Messerschmit came out of the darkness, its guns blazing. Of nine men, only Neville and Urquhart survive, parachuting into the heart of occupied France. Now the time of testing has begun in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the enemy. -
The Fox, a brilliant German agent, patiently bides his time as Allied forces prepare for the invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Southern England is one huge armed camp and no-one is aware of the danger in their midst. A sudden, deadly E-boat attack stuns the military. Top secret invasion plans are stolen. The Fox has struck. As he tries to get the plans to Germany in time, two officers are ordered to stop him at all costs. -
Once the looting didn't start until the enemy was defeated. But in North Africa no-one hung around waiting for the retreat. With half of Egypt waiting open-armed for anything going, people simply stole whatever was nailed down and flogged it on the Cairo black market. The British -the Italians - Rommel's Afrika Corps - they all used each other's captured vehicles, uniforms and stores. This is how the Desert Ratbags - a concert party stranded behind the Italian lines - operate. With their very special skills, from pilfering to stage performing, they not only survive, but see a little action for themselves. -
Swordpoint: John Harris
$6.001944: Cassino must be taken. Monte Cassino had become a German bastion against the Allied advance through Italy. Even with the historic abbey reduced to rubble, the mountain itself continued to command the adjoining valleys and block the road to Rome. Frontal assault had been a costly failure; but now Brigadier Heathfield had a plan. The job of leading the attack fell to Colonel Yuell and then men of the North Yorkshires, veterans of Africa and as hard, tired and mixed a group of soldiery as the war had yet produced.
