PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: air force
Soviet military officer
Serpukhov-15 is a small military townlet about 80 miles (130 km) south of Moscow. It’s sparse, dotted with evergreens, stoically rectangular warehouses, and several giant gray domes. A skeleton of the...
German minister
Hermann Göring was a leader of the Nazi Party and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany. He was condemned to hang as a war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at...
president of Egypt
Hosni Mubarak was an Egyptian military officer and politician who served as president of Egypt from October 1981 until February 2011, when popular unrest forced him to step down. Born in the Nile River...
United States Army general
William Mitchell was a U.S. Army officer who early advocated a separate U.S. air force and greater preparedness in military aviation. He was court-martialed for his outspoken views and did not live to...
United States general
As a child he was known as Chuck. As an F-16 pilot he earned the nickname “Swamp Thang.” (More on that later.) During his 40-year military career, he came to be known as C.Q. Officially, he is Gen. Charles...
American soldier, songwriter, and author
Barry Sadler was an American soldier, singer, songwriter, and pulp-fiction author who is principally remembered for his best-selling song “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” Sadler’s parents divorced in...
Canadian fighter pilot
William Barker was a Canadian World War I fighter pilot who was the most-decorated war hero in Canadian history. The eldest son of a farmer who was also a blacksmith and sawmill operator, Barker grew up...
Indian fighter pilot and astronaut
Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair is one of the four astronauts selected for India’s Gaganyaan crewed space mission to low Earth orbit, planned for 2025. A test and fighter pilot of group captain rank in the...
prime minister of Egypt
Ahmed Shafiq is an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as prime minister from January to March 2011 and stood as an independent in Egypt’s 2012 presidential election. Shafiq was born into...
German field marshal
Albert Kesselring was a field marshal who, as German commander in chief, south, became one of Adolf Hitler’s top defensive strategists during World War II. The son of a town education officer, Kesselring...
American aviator and WWII hero
Edward O’Hare was an American aviator and war hero who became the U.S. Navy’s first flying ace during World War II. At the time, a flying ace was a fighter pilot who shot down five or more enemy planes....
president of Syria
Hafez al-Assad was the president of Syria (1971–2000) who brought stability to the country and established it as a powerful presence in the Middle East. Born into a poor family of ʿAlawites, a minority...
United States Air Force general
Lori Robinson is a U.S. Air Force (USAF) general who served (2016–18) as commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM), becoming the highest-ranking...
French author
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French aviator and writer whose works are the unique testimony of a pilot and a warrior who looked at adventure and danger with a poet’s eyes. His fable Le Petit Prince (The...
Indian military officer
Subroto Mukerjee was an Indian military officer and the first Indian commander of the Indian Air Force (IAF). Mukerjee was the youngest of four children in the family of a civil servant in the colonial...
German World War II combat pilot
Günther Rall was a German World War II combat pilot, the third highest scoring fighter ace in history. He flew more than 600 combat missions, scored 275 victories (mostly against Soviet aircraft), and...
Indian astronaut
Shubhanshu Shukla is an Indian astronaut who is part of the Gaganyaan program, which will send India’s first astronauts into space in their own crewed vehicle, and who is scheduled to visit the International...
British air marshal
Trafford Leigh-Mallory was a British air marshal who commanded the Allied air forces in the Normandy Invasion (1944) during World War II. Leigh-Mallory was educated at the University of Cambridge, received...
American sportsman and businessman
John Hay Whitney was an American multimillionaire and sportsman who had a multifaceted career as a publisher, financier, philanthropist, and horse breeder. Whitney was born into a prominent family; his...
United States general
Claire L. Chennault was a U.S. major general who commanded the U.S. Army Air Forces in China (1942–45) and created the American Volunteer Group (AVG), best known as the Flying Tigers. Chennault briefly...
United States general
Henry Harley Arnold was an air strategist, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1907, Arnold...
Polish pilot
Mirosław Hermaszewski is a Polish pilot who was the first Pole in space. A 1965 graduate of the military pilot school in Deblin, Hermaszewski entered the Polish air force and in 1971 graduated from the...
British military officer
Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet was a British air officer who initiated and directed the “saturation bombing” that the Royal Air Force inflicted on Germany during World War II. Harris was reared...
president of Israel
Ezer Weizman was an Israeli soldier and politician who was the seventh president of Israel (1993–2000). Weizman was the nephew of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, and during World War II he served...
king of Belgium
Philippe, King of the Belgians became the king of Belgium in 2013. Philippe was the first of three children of Albert II, who became Belgium’s sixth king in 1993. He received his early education in both...
American pilot
Chuck Yeager was an American test pilot and U.S. Air Force officer who was the first man to exceed the speed of sound in flight. Yeager enlisted in the U.S. Army in September 1941, shortly after graduating...
United States general
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. was a pilot, officer, and administrator who became the first African American general in the U.S. Air Force. His father, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., was the first African American to...
United States general
James H. Doolittle was an American aviator and army general who led an air raid on Tokyo and other Japanese cities four months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Doolittle was educated at Los Angeles...
head of state, Ghana
Jerry J. Rawlings was a military and political leader in Ghana who twice (1979, 1981) overthrew the government and seized power. His second period of rule (1981–2001) afforded Ghana political stability...
German military officer
Hugo Sperrle was a field marshal of the Luftwaffe (German air force) during World War II. Sperrle joined the German army in 1903 and flew combat aircraft in World War I. After holding various commands...
American businessman
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was an American businessman who turned inherited wealth and a variety of interests into significant achievements in business and public service. Whitney was born into two of...
United States military officer
Carl Spaatz was the leading U.S. combat air commander in World War II and the first chief of staff of the independent U.S. Air Force. A graduate (1914) of the United States Military Academy at West Point,...
Cuban pilot and cosmonaut
Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez is a Cuban pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first Latin American, the first person of African descent, and the first Cuban to fly in space. After the revolution of 1959, Tamayo Méndez...
British military officer
Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard was a British officer and air marshal who helped lay the foundations of the Royal Air Force (RAF). Trenchard entered the army in 1893 and served in the South...
Slovak pilot and air force officer
Ivan Bella is a Slovak pilot and air force officer and the first Slovak citizen to go into space. Bella graduated from the military high school in Banská Bystrica in 1983 and earned his university degree...
British air marshal
Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder was a marshal of the Royal Air Force and deputy commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower who contributed significantly...
Romanian pilot and cosmonaut
Dumitru Prunariu is a Romanian pilot and cosmonaut who was the first Romanian citizen in space. Prunariu earned a degree in aerospace engineering from the Polytechnic University in Bucharest in 1976. In...
German officer
Adolf Galland was a German fighter ace and officer who commanded the fighter forces of the Luftwaffe (German air force) during World War II. The son of an estate bailiff of French descent, Galland became...
German aviator
Hanna Reitsch was the leading female aviator and German pilot in the 20th century. (Read Orville Wright’s 1929 biography of his brother, Wilbur.) Reitsch originally trained in the 1930s as a flying missionary....
Italian general
Giulio Douhet was an Italian army general and the father of strategic air power. Trained as an artillery officer, from 1912 to 1915 Douhet served as commander of the Aeronautical Battalion, Italy’s first...
Vietnamese pilot and cosmonaut
Phạm Tuân is a Vietnamese pilot and cosmonaut, the first Vietnamese citizen in space. Tuân joined the Vietnam People’s Air Force in 1965, where he became a pilot and engineer. During the Vietnam War he...
South Vietnamese leader
Nguyen Cao Ky was a South Vietnamese military and political leader known for his flamboyant manner and militant policies during the Vietnam War. A member of the French forces that opposed the Vietnamese...
Syrian pilot and air force officer
Muhammed Faris was a Syrian pilot and air force officer who became the first Syrian citizen to go into space. After graduating from military pilot school at the Syrian air force academy near Aleppo in...
British air marshal
Charles Frederick Algernon Portal was a British air marshal and chief of the British Air Staff during World War II. Portal was educated at Winchester and Christ Church College, Oxford, and joined the Royal...
United States general
Curtis E. LeMay was a U.S. Air Force officer whose expertise in strategic bombardment techniques was important during World War II and afterward. Entering the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1928, LeMay advanced...
United States Air Force officer
Nathan F. Twining was a U.S. Air Force officer who played a large part in directing the air war against Japan during World War II. A 1918 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., Twining...
British military officer
Sir John Cotesworth Slessor was a British marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) who was one of the architects of British air strategy during and after World War II. A childhood victim of polio, Slessor...
United States general
Frank M. Andrews was a U.S. soldier and air force officer who contributed signally to the evolution of U.S. bombardment aviation during his command (1935–39) of the General Headquarters Air Force, the...
Japanese general
Yamashita Tomoyuki was a Japanese general known for his successful attacks on Malaya and Singapore during World War II. After graduating from the Army Academy (1905) and the Army War College (1916), Yamashita...
German aviator
Manfred, baron von Richthofen was Germany’s top aviator and leading ace in World War I. (Read Orville Wright’s 1929 biography of his brother, Wilbur.) Members of a prosperous family, Richthofen and his...
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