Bill Yenne has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 5 ratings. The most-rated is When Tigers Ruled the Sky.
When Tigers Ruled the Sky
Summary
From the acclaimed author of Hit the Target and Big Week, an in-depth account of the legendary World War II combat group the Flying Tigers. In 1940 Pearl Harbor had not yet happened, and America was not yet at war with Japan. But China had been trying to stave off Japanese aggression for three years - and was desperate for aircraft and trained combat pilots. General Chiang Kai-shek sent military aviation advisor Claire Chennault to Washington, where President Roosevelt was sympathetic but knew he could not intervene overtly. Instead he quietly helped Chennault put together a group of American volunteer pilots. This was how the 1st American Volunteer Group - more commonly known as the Flying Tigers - was born. With the trademark smiling shark jaws on their P-40 fighters, these army, navy, and marine pilots became a sensation as they fought for the Chinese. Those who initially doubted them were eventually in awe as they persevered over Rangoon despite being outnumbered 14-1 by Japanese aircraft; as they were described by Madame Chiang Kai-shek as her "little angels" and by a Chinese foreign minister as "the soundest investment China ever made"; and as they ultimately destroyed hundreds of Japanese planes while losing only a dozen of their own in combat. Two of their veterans would later earn the Medal of Honor, and as a group the Flying Tigers managed to rack up a better record than any other air wing in the Pacific Theater. When Tigers Ruled the Sky is a thrilling and triumphant account of their courage and their legacy.
©2016 American Graphic Systems, Inc. (P)2016 Recorded Books
Hit the Target
Summary
Less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US Army formed its first air force designated to operate overseas, the Eighth. Within four months they had set up base in England. Three months later they were bombing German targets in occupied Europe. The Eighth was the first bomber command on either side to commit to strategic daylight bombing. It was a major change in tactics - and the men of the Eighth paid the price in both lives and blood. But it was that very sacrifice that led the Allies to victory. Hit the Target introduces listeners to those who made the Eighth Air Force the formidable juggernaut it soon became - men of all ranks, from General Tooey Spaatz, the hard-driving founding commander, to Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, the hero who led the first air raid on Japan, to Maynard "Snuffy" Smith, the irascible first airman in Europe to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal, who survived his time with the "Bloody Hundredth", which lost airmen at a horrifying rate, and who went on to serve as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. The story of the Mighty Eighth is told through these men, whose careers paralleled the early history of aviation and who helped to revolutionize airborne warfare and win World War II.
©2015 Bill Yenne (P)2016 Recorded Books
Sitting Bull
Summary
Sitting Bull’s name is still the best known of any American Indian leader, but his life and legacy remain shrouded with misinformation and half-truths. Sitting Bull’s life spanned the entire clash of cultures and ultimate destruction of the Plains Indian way of life. He was a powerful leader and a respected shaman, but neither fully captures the enigma of Sitting Bull. He was a good friend of Buffalo Bill and skillful negotiator with the American government, yet erroneously credited with both murdering Custer at the Little Big Horn and with being the chief instigator of the Ghost Dance movement. The reality of his life, as Bill Yenne reveals in his absorbing new portrait, Sitting Bull, is far more intricate and compelling. Tracing Sitting Bull’s history from a headstrong youth and his first contact with encroaching settlers, through his ascension as the spiritual and military leader of the Lakota, friendship with a Swiss-American widow from New York, and death at the hands of the Indian police on the eve of the massacre at Wounded Knee, While Sitting Bull was the leading figure of Plains Indian resistance his message, as Yenne explains, was of self-reliance, not violence. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull was not confronting Custer as popular myth would have it, but riding through the Lakota camp making sure the most defenseless of his tribe - the children - were safe. In Sitting Bull we find a man who, in the face of an uncertain future, helped ensure the survival of his people. The book is published by Westholme Publishing. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
©2009 Bill Yenne (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks
Operation Long Jump: Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Greatest Assassination Plot in History
Summary
In the middle of World War II, Nazi military intelligence discovered a seemingly easy way to win the war for Adolf Hitler. The three heads of the Allied forces - Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin - were planning to meet in Tehran in October, 1943. Under Hitler's personal direction, the Nazis launched "Operation Long Jump", an intricate plan to track the Allied leaders in Tehran and assassinate all three men at the same time. "I suppose it would make a pretty good haul if they could get all three of us," Roosevelt later said. Historian Bill Yenne retells the incredible, globe-spanning story of the most ambitious assassination plot ever thwarted in Operation Long Jump.
©2015 Bill Yenne (P)2018 Regnery Publishing
Hap Arnold
Summary
General Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold is widely considered the father of the United States Air Force. But his long list of accomplishments doesn’t begin or end there. He was also the first and only five-star general of the US Air Force; one of the first US military aviators; the first American to carry air mail; and the architect of the war-winning air strategy of World War II. In this new biography of one of the American military’s most towering figures, author Bill Yenne weaves the story of Hap Arnold’s life, from his youthful days as a cunning prankster to his sunset career as an elder statesman. All along, Yenne unfolds General Arnold’s life like the adventure story it is. A bold advocate for technological advancement, Hap Arnold was a powerful character in the golden age of aviation, an innovative warrior in the conflict that defined the modern era, and the creator of an entirely new branch of the US military. Hap Arnold: The General Who Invented the US Air Force is an adventure biography for history buffs, aviation enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the events that shaped America and the world in the first half of the 20th century.
©2013 Bill Yenne (P)2019 Regnery Publishing