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ajbaime

@ajbaime

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NY Times bestselling author A.J. Baime.
New book: BIRD MEN, out on 10/20!!!
Learn more and order Bird Men at ajbaime.com.

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Years of research, writing, and travel, and it's finally a real thing I can hold in my hands.

Bird Men is out this week, and I honestly don't have the words for what that feels like right now.

Pre-order link in bio.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWIIHistory by @ajbaime

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2 days ago

I genuinely can't believe it's almost here. 6 days until Bird Men: The Rise of American Airpower and the Machine That Ended WWII arrives.

Looking back at photos like this one, pilots who had no idea what they were about to become part of, still gets me every time. Years of archives, interviews, and research are about to be in your hands.

Pre-order link in bio!!

#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWIIHistory by @ajbaime

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4 days ago

This photo captures the moment a plan got made that would help end a war.

Hap Arnold and FDR at the Casablanca Conference, 1943, where "The Combined Bomber Offensive" took shape. Hitler had it coming, and he was going to get it.

Read the full story in Bird Men.

Photo courtesy of the Robert and Kathleen Arnold Collection.

Bird Men, out October 20.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWII by @ajbaime

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18 days ago

Hap Arnold with flying crews in North Africa, 1942.

Take a look at the scene around them. Desert living was hard living. But these flyboys had one job: defeat the Nazis and win the war.

Read about it in Bird Men.

Photo courtesy of the Robert and Kathleen Arnold Collection.

Bird Men, out October 20.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWII by @ajbaime

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20 days ago

This is one of the most photographed rooms of the 20th century, Stalin, FDR, and Churchill at the Tehran Conference, 1943. But look closer. Standing in the back, second from left, is Hap Arnold, the father of the American Air Force.

He kept diaries through the whole war, and they're riveting. Not polished, not written for anyone but himself. I leaned on them heavily for this chapter of Bird Men, and they're some of the best primary source material I've ever worked with.

Bird Men, out October 20.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #HapArnold #WWII #HarperCollins by @ajbaime

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23 days ago

Arnold, on the left, in pilot gear around 1911, standing with Orville Wright in the center.

This exact moment shows up in Chapter 2 of Bird Men, my new book on the origin story of the U.S. Air Force. It's wild to think this is where it all started, a guy in a leather cap, learning to fly from one of the two brothers who invented flight in the first place.

Photo courtesy of the Robert and Kathleen Arnold Collection.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #USAF #HarperCollins by @ajbaime

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25 days ago

Two true heroes of the sky: Hap Arnold (left) and Jimmy Doolittle, circa 1942. Together they hatched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, one of the most famous bombing raids ever. Read about it in BIRD MEN. (Photo: Robert and Kathleen Arnold Collection)
#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWII #HarperCollins by @ajbaime

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a month ago

The father of the American Air Force with Hedy Lamarr, screen star and inventor of a radio guidance system during WWII. Notice Arnold's Four Stars. He soon added a fifth, and is the only USAF General to wear Five Stars. Read it in BIRD MEN. (Photo: Robert and Kathleen Arnold Collection)
#BirdMen by @ajbaime

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a month ago

One man watched aviation go from wooden biplanes to nuclear weapons, and he was in the middle of it the entire time.

This is Hap Arnold, the father of the American Air Force, during early flight training with the Wright Brothers around 1911 or 1912. He was the first infantryman ever sent to learn to fly with them. By the end of his life, he'd overseen the formation of the entire Air Force, in an era of nuclear weapons and rocketry.

His story is at the center of Bird Men, out October 20.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWIIHistory by @ajbaime

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a month ago

Colonel Caesar Rodriguez shot down three enemy aircraft as a fighter pilot. Something he told me stuck with me long after our conversation ended: his name is on the plane, but it takes an entire team to make a mission work. He called it the "fingerprints of a mission."

That's how I feel about this book too. My name is on the cover, but it carries the fingerprints of a lot of people.

Bird Men: The Rise of American Airpower and the Machine That Ended WWII, out October 20.

#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWIIHistory by @ajbaime

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a month ago

General Arnold, the Father of the Air Force, with Ike and with Gen. Omar Bradley on the beach at Normandy, June 12, 1944, six days after D-Day. Read about it in BIRD MEN. (Photos courtesy of the Robert and Kathleen Arnold Collection.)
#BirdMen #AJBaime #WWIIHistory by @ajbaime

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a month ago

I got to drive a 1931 French propeller powered car, the Helicron, through the streets of Nashville. Read about it in Road & Track's June/July issue!

Yes, propeller powered. Yes, it's as wild as it sounds. And that wasn't even the strangest vehicle on site that day. There was also a tiny Peel car that somehow made its way through a restaurant's front door. That's my pal Jeff Lane, the car's owner, and the founder of the Lane Motor Museum. Thx Jeff!! by @ajbaime

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a month ago