Spying from the Sky: At the Controls of Us Cold War Aerial Intelligence - Couverture rigide

Richardson, Robert L; Gregory, William J

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1612008364 ISBN 13 : 9781612008363

Editeur : Casemate Publishers, 2020

Synopsis

"...an interesting read about an Airman's life in the USAF, spent mostly in strategic reconnaissance from World War II to the 1970s. It is also an excellent history of USAF and CIA strategic reconnaissance in the 1950s and 1960s." - Air & Space Power Journal

William Gregory, "Greg" to all, was born into a sharecropper's life in the hills of north central Tennessee. From the back of a mule-drawn plow, Greg learned the value of resilience and the importance of living a determined life. Refusing to accept a life of continued poverty, Greg sought and found a way out--a work-study college program that made it possible to leave farming behind him forever.

While at college, Greg completed the Civilian Pilot Training Program and was subsequently accepted into the Army's pilot training program. Earning his wings in 1942, Greg became a P-38 combat pilot and served in North Africa during the summer of 1943--a critical time when the Luftwaffe was still a potent threat, and America had begun the march northward from the Mediterranean into Europe proper.

Following the war, Greg served with a B-29 unit, then transitioned to the new, red-hot B-47 strategic bomber. In his frequent deployments, he was always assigned the same target in the Soviet Union--Tblisi, Stalin's home town. While a B-47 pilot, Greg was selected to join America's first high-altitude program--the Black Knights. Flying RB-57D aircraft, Greg and his team flew peripheral "ferret" missions around the Soviet Union and its satellites, collecting critical order-of-battle data so desperately needed by the Air Force at that time. When that program neared its design end, and following the Gary Powers shoot-down over the Soviet Union, Greg was assigned to command of the CIA's U-2 unit at Edwards AFB. It was during that five-year command that Greg and his team provided critical overflight intelligence, including during the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam build-up. He found time to also become one of the first to fly U-2s off aircraft carriers in a demonstration project.

Following his U-2 command, Greg attended the National War College, was assigned to the reconnaissance office at the Pentagon, and then was named Vice-Commandant of the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). Greg retired from the Air Force in 1972.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Following a successful career in international business and global education, Robert Richardson began writing about the little-known, personal, but critically important stories of World War II and the Cold War. He wrote The Jagged Edge of Duty in 2017, and his current project relates to the events in the South Pacific during the early months of World War II. A life-long conservationist, Richardson is co-founder of the Inland Northwest Land Conservancy.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Casemate Publishers
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1612008364
• ISBN 13: 9781612008363
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 312
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible