{"title":"Ted Fahrenwald","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"bailout-over-normandy-book-ted-fahrenwald-9781612004747","title":"Bailout Over Normandy","description":"The remarkable memoir of a U.S. fighter pilot, who after his escapades of shooting down German aircraft in France began an even greater adventure after being shot down himself. Ted Fahrenwald was a 22-year-old daredevil pilot in the famed 352nd Fighter Group when he bailed out of his burning P-51 Mustang two days after D-Day on his 100th mission. Parachuting into the farmlands of Normandy, he was immediately picked up by the local maquis, the guerrilla branch of the French Resistance. His rudimentary French, wily and gregarious personality, and backwoods skills allowed him to quickly make fast friends of these unruly outlaws, and he spent the next several months carousing and raiding with their band. But, determined to rejoin his squadron, Ted left his new comrades to hike through the fields and forests of the most heavily occupied areas of northern France toward the Channel coast, and the advancing Allied liberation armies. Captured by the Wehrmacht, however, interrogated as a spy, and interned in a POW camp, the author made a daring escape just before his deportation to Germany. Nothing diminished Ted's talent for spotting the ironic humor in even the most aggravating or dangerous situations, nor his penchant for extracting his own improvised and sometimes hilarious version of justice. The author recorded his swashbuckling adventures at age 24, after his discharge and return to the States. Afterward he went into business and never again put pen to paper. But his immediate reminiscence of his wartime experience reveal a literary talent that is rare. At once a suspenseful page-turner and an outrageously witty tale of daring and friendship, this book brings to life the daily intrigues of the combatants of World War II.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49531107475729,"sku":"CIN1612004741G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49610308616465,"sku":"GOR010267576","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50960853664017,"sku":"CIN1612004741VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1612004741.jpg?v=1750799432"},{"product_id":"bailout-over-normandy-book-ted-fahrenwald-9781612001579","title":"Bailout Over Normandy","description":"This is the remarkable, newfound memoir of a U.S. fighter pilot, who after his escapades of shooting down German aircraft in France found himself shot down by them in turn, thence to begin an even greater adventure.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49641120596241,"sku":"GOR013654428","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51411760087313,"sku":"GOR008483880","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51826228265233,"sku":"CIN1612001572VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1612001572.jpg?v=1750862620"},{"product_id":"wot-a-way-to-run-a-war-book-ted-fahrenwald-9781612002545","title":"Wot a Way to Run a War!","description":"Ted Fahrenwald flew P-47s and P-51s with the famed 352nd Fighter Group out of Bodney, England, during the critical tipping-point period of the air war over Europe. A classic devil-may-care fighter pilot, he was also a distinctively talented writer and correspondent. After a typical day of aerial combat and strafing missions over Nazi-occupied Europe and of course, the requisite partying and creative mischief on base Ted sat in his Nissen hut at a borrowed typewriter and composed exquisitely humorous letter-essays detailing his exploits in the air and on the ground to his family back home. But they are not the mundane missives of a homesick young man who missed his mother s cooking. Educated as a journalist, this incurably comedic pilot detailed his aerial exploits in a hilarious and self-effacing style that combines the vernacular of the day with flights of joyful imagination rivaling St. Exupery. And he didn t sanitize his musings: Ted enthusiastically narrates the day-to-day rollercoaster ribaldry that was the natural M.O. of the young men who were tasked to kill Hitler s Luftwaffe. His descriptions of near-constant drinking, skirt-chasing, gunplay, gambling, and out-and-out tomfoolery put the lie to the notion of the Greatest Generation as an earnest band of do-gooders.These collected writings are more than literary entertainment: They are a boon to military and aviation historians and also to those who study period language and culture and the science of societies at war. The letters end dramatically when the ammunition truck that Ted was strafing exploded and knocked his Mustang The Joker out of the sky on June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day. The subsequent tale of his adventures with the Maquis (French Resistance) and his capture by the Germans and escape is recounted in a full-length book, Bailout Over Normandy: A Flyboy s Adventures with the French Resistance and Other Escapades in Occupied France. Written at age 24 and recently published by Casemate, Ted s book is a natural accompaniment to this collection of letters. The Maquis embraced this irreverent and whimsical American fighter pilot as one of their own, and you will too when you read Ted's chronicle of adventures in his letters. His stories leap off the page and provide a depth, richness, and sheer enjoyment that are rare in WWII literature.REVIEWS Exquisitely funny, these letters are also an historical treasure that give tremendous insight into the day-to-day life of a typical USAAF fighter group. Jay A. Stout, author of The Men Who Killed the Luftwaffe and Fighter Group: The 352nd Blue-Nosed Bastards in World War II.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49645327286545,"sku":"GOR008212957","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50039025107217,"sku":"CIN1612002544G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51331056107793,"sku":"CIN1612002544VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1612002544.jpg?v=1750799428"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-ted-fahrenwald.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}