Bill Yenne

Operation Long Jump looks at the German plot to kill President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Russian leader Joseph Stalin at their meeting in Tehran. It opens with a fictional bleak picture of the Germans succeeding. The book then goes into the background of each countries intelligence operations at the time and what Iran was like at that time. The author also gave a background of some of the local individuals that played a major role in the events in Tehran. Then the events of show more Operation Long Jump were covered, explaining how the operation failed. The final portion of the book is looking at how the world and the end of WWII could have been affected if the plot had succeeded. I found the book to be a smooth read. It gave a lot information about a part of WWII that I didn't know had even happened. I very much enjoyed this book. show less

The subjects of this book are not the greats, nor the near greats, of aviations history. They are the black sheep that have embarrassed their builders, enraged their owners and frightened their pilots. In many cases, these are aircraft that never should have been built and which are more starkly bizarre than the most deranged flights of fantasy. This book of "black sheep'' includes some of the worst and most dangerous contrivances ever perpetrated, such as Count Caproni's Transaereo, which show more was really nothing more than three huge triplanes nailed to a houseboat. Then there's the worthless Brewster F2ABuffalo, the asymmetrical Blohm & Voss Bv-141, the "disposable'' Bachem Ba-349, and the infamous Yokosuka MXY7--the only airplane ever designed to kill its own pilot--just to name a few. show less

Convair Deltas: From SeaDart to Hustler tells the compelling story of America's aerospace industry in its heyday. It was a time when manufacturers boldly took the initiative to explore futuristic designs by actually building and flying airplanes to determine how well they worked, if at all. Convair led the way with a complete family of aircraft that included America's first delta-wing jet, the revolutionary XF-92A, and the world's first jet-powered seaplane, the XF2Y-1 SeaDart. Added to that show more list were the XFY-1 Pogo turboprop vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) fighter and the F-102A Delta Dagger and F-106A Delta Dart supersonic missile-firing interceptors. As a fitting finale, Convair also produced the record-breaking four-engine B-58 Hustler--the world's first Mach 2 strategic bomber.
Noted aviation author Bill Yenne thoroughly documents Convair's quest to conquer the aerodynamic mysteries of the delta wing. His stories explain the dramatic struggles and technological triumphs that gave the world some of its greatest fighter and bomber aircraft. While a number of these individual aircraft have been covered in other books over the years, there has never been a major work featuring the detailed developmental history of all six together. Plus, this book shows them in the proper historical context of U.S. aircraft designed for frontline operation during the Cold War. show less

There have been many books written about Himmler’s SS, the organization that began as Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (“protection squad”) and ended up the multi-layered behemoth most responsible for war crimes in Nazi Germany. However, Bill Yenne’s book, “Hitler’s Master of the Dark Arts,” has a slightly different purpose than most of these: to show the background and origins of Nazi racial philosophy and how these philosophies made the SS tick.

On the positive side, Yenne provides show more an exhaustive background of the philosophies of Teutonic racial superiority (dating back to the mid-19th century) and an in-depth background of the German philosophers whose belief systems included – among other things -- the embrace of pre-Christian pagan religions (hence the word “occult” in Yenne’s title) and whose philosophies young Heinrich Himmler devoured. Yenne shows how Himmler, determined to transform his belief in “Aryan” superiority into a dogma, promoted archaeological digs and anthropological studies of living Tibetans and created the “Ahnenerbe”, an organization devoted to proving Aryan superiority.

The Ahnenerbe’s sub-organizations (there were more than 50) are listed in a sidebar, which gives the reader a clear sense of how doggedly determined Himmler was to "prove" his point. Speaking of sidebars, there are many extremely informative ones scattered throughout the book and, coupled with the plethora of illustrations also included, they make Yenne’s book a visual and illuminating treat (if one can use that term when discussing the history of such an aberrant and abhorrent organization).

On the down side, however, the text is often peppered with somewhat corny suppositions. That Heinrich Himmler believed himself to be the reincarnation of Heinrich I, the first king of Germany is an interesting fact but Yenne should have let it go after stating it once. He doesn’t: he keeps bringing it up throughout the text as if he himself believes it. When discussing Himmler’s marriage, he mentions: “As Himmler might have observed, though, this was actually not his first marriage. His first wedding had occurred 1,022 years earlier in 906, when, in his previous life as Heinrich I, he had married a woman named Hatheburg, whose Saxon father was Count Edwin of Merseburg.” At the end of this sizeable paragraph, which describes the noble lineage of the Heinrich I’s bride, Yenne finally provides his reason for including this information: “Heinrich Himmler was no doubt pleased to lay claim to such a majestic and most Aryan pedigree through his belief in reincarnation.”

A paragraph with a fairly interesting dip back into Himmler’s imagined ancestry, yes, but when the justification for its inclusion rests on phrases such as “As Himmler might have observed” and “Himmler was no doubt pleased” the reader can see that Yenne is no longer stating facts.

These types of suppositions are located more in the first half of the book, however, and the writing, while occasionally clumsy throughout, also contains some solid information. In spite of the book's flaws, “Hitler’s Master of the Dark Arts” manages to clearly illustrate the philosophies of the little man behind the pince-nez who orchestrated the Holocaust and his cadre of Black Knights who carried it out. show less