"Of all the feats of American ingenuity in World War II, perhaps none was as impressive in scale or vital to the Allied victory as the creation of American airpower. Just a few years before the start of World War II, the American military was stuck in the dark ages of aviation, with the U.S. Army's Air Corps mainly focused, not on combat, but on mail delivery. Fast forward to end of the war, and America had launched the most impressive flying machine the world had ever seen: the B-29 Superfortress, a weapon so essential to ending the war that its research and development process cost more than the Manhattan Project. Now A. J. Baime, one of our foremost chroniclers of twentieth-century history, returns with the story of this remarkable turnaround, detailing the creation of the Superfortress and how U.S. General Hap Arnold made the rise of American airpower a reality."-- Provided by publisher.
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