Audiobooks by Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It

"The P-38 Lightning was one of the fastest operational fighters of World War II, famous for its successes in North Africa and the Pacific. In The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel shares the stories of the young men who climbed into the cockpits of the P-38 to fight for freedom, and of those who created, tested, and deployed these fearsome machines. The P-38 was the product of the Lockheed Corporation, the first fighter they ever built, principally conceptualized by Kelly Johnson, whose design was to meet Air Corps specifications. But it was no easy plane to fly. P-38 units were formed quickly once the United States entered World War II in December 1941. Training was rushed to get pilots and planes to Europe as quickly as possible to serve as bomber escorts. Although the P-38 could fly at the high altitudes the bombers flew, it was not the right aircraft for the mission. In North Africa's warmer air, however, the P-38 came into its own. This book focuses on the men who flew this challenging aircraft and the men who designed and decided how to deploy it. In the Pacific skies, the P-38, its pilots, and designers made the heroic history captured here."

Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel (Author), L.J. Ganser (Narrator)

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American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets

"At the close of World War II, Allied forces faced frightening German secret weapons. When Hitler's war machine began to collapse, the race was on to snatch these secrets before the Soviet Red Army found them. The last battle of World War II was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty—the hunt for Nazi technologies. In April 1945 American armies were on the brink of winning their greatest military victory, yet America's technological backwardness was shocking when measured against that of the retreating enemy. Senior officers knew the seemingly overwhelming victory was less than it appeared. Two intrepid American Army Air Forces colonels set out to regain America's technological edge. One, Harold E. Watson, went after the German jets; the other, Donald L. Putt, went after the Nazis' intellectual capital. With the help of German and American pilots, Watson brought the jets to America; Putt succeeded in bringing the German scientists to the Army Air Forces' aircraft test and evaluation center. A fighter pilot, Lloyd Wenzel, a Texan of German descent, then turned these enemy aliens into productive American citizens."

Colonel Wolfgang W. E. Samuel (Author), Basil Sands (Narrator)

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