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  • Kangaroo Squadron

  • American Courage in the Darkest Days of World War II
  • By: Bruce Gamble
  • Narrated by: Mark Boyett
  • Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)
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Kangaroo Squadron

By: Bruce Gamble
Narrated by: Mark Boyett
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Summary

In early 1942, while the American military was still in disarray from the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, a single US Army squadron advanced to the far side of the world to face America's new enemy.

Based in Australia with inadequate supplies and no ground support, the squadron's pilots and combat crew endured tropical diseases while confronting numerically superior Japanese forces. Yet the outfit, dubbed the Kangaroo Squadron, proved remarkably resilient and successful, conducting long-range bombing raids, carrying out armed reconnaissance missions, and rescuing General MacArthur and his staff from the Philippines.

Before now, the story of their courage and determination in the face of overwhelming odds has largely been untold. Using eyewitness accounts from diaries, letters, interviews, and memoirs, as well as Japanese sources, historian Bruce Gamble brings to vivid life this dramatic true account.

But the Kangaroo Squadron's story doesn't end in World War II. One of the squadron's B-17 bombers, which crash-landed on its first mission, was recovered from New Guinea after almost 70 years in a jungle swamp. The intertwined stories of the Kangaroo Squadron and the "Swamp Ghost" are filled with thrilling accounts of aerial combat, an epic survival story, and the powerful mystique of an invaluable war relic.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 Bruce Gamble (P)2018 Hachette Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"With his exquisite eye for detail and spellbinding talent as a stroyteller, Bruce Gamble takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the perilous early months of World War II in the Southwest Pacific." (Colonel Walter Boyne, author and former director of the National Air and Space Museum)

"Bruce Gamble has beautifully captured the dark early days of World War II - and the brave American airmen willing to take the fight to the enemy. With a novelist's gift for storytelling, Gamble takes readers into cockpits over Japanese bases, drops them waist-deep in malarial swamps, and lets them unwind in dusty outback bars. Kangaroo Squadron is a soaring story and a triumph of the American spirit." (James M. Scott, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Rampage and Target Tokyo)

"Bruce Gamble demonstrates again why he is one of the best aviation historians in the business. In Kangaroo Squadron he has crafted a fascinating account of men and machines, painting a compelling picture of what it was like to fight as an American aviator during the very darkest days of the Pacific War. Outstanding!" (Jonathan Parshall, coauthor of Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway)

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