The story of the company that was founded by the inventor of the snowmobile In 1942, Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile and founded his company to manufacture them. From its humble beginnings as an entrepreneurial company in rural Quebec, led by an enterprising inventor, Bombardier Inc. has emerged as a global leader in the transportation industry. This book tells the fascinating tale of this remarkably well managed company that has enjoyed spectacular growth in its chosen markets through strong leadership and management strategy, succession planning, strategic diversification, and turnaround and acquisition artistry. The fascinating story of the world's largest rail manufacturer for both railway and subway Reveals why Bombardier Inc. is a multi-faceted global company yet nobody knows their name Written by Larry MacDonald the author of Nortel Network The Bombardier Story shows how invention and entrepreneurship, management and leadership, smooth succession planning, and turnaround and acquisition built this global powerhouse.

The Bombardier Story describes how close to ruin the company came, and how it survived a drastic shakeout that reduced the number of players in the snowmobile industry from over 100 to just three."--BOOK JACKET.

This enthralling WWII biography combines a downed B-17 bombardier’s unfinished memoir with letters from the French girl who saved his life. Susan Tate Ankeny’s father was a World War II veteran bombardier who had bailed from a burning B-17 over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. After he died, she found his unfinished memoir, stacks of envelopes, black-and-white photographs, mission reports, dog tags, and the fake identity cards he used in his escape. Ankeny spent more than a decade tracking down letter writers, their loved ones, and anyone who had played a role in her father's story, culminating in a trip to France where she retraced his path with the same people who had guided him more than sixty years ago. While piecing together her father’s wartime experience, Ankeny discovered a remarkable hero. Godelieve Van Laere was just a teenaged girl when she saved the fallen Lieutenant Dean Tate, risking her life and forging a friendship that would last into a new century. The result is a fascinating and dramatic World War II tale enhanced by personal interviews with participants. It traces the transformation of a small-town American boy into a bombardier, the thrill and chaos of aerial warfare, and the horror of bailing from a flaming aircraft over enemy territory. It distinguishes the actions of a little-known French resistance network for Allied airmen known as Shelburne. And it shines a light on the courage and cunning of a young woman who risked her life to save another.

In this riveting narrative, Jack R. Myers recounts his experiences as a B-17 bombardier during World War II. Commissioned a second lieutenant in 1944 at age twenty, Myers began flying missions with the 2nd Bomb Group, U.S. Fifteenth Air Force. He learned firsthand the exhilaration—and terror—of being shot at and missed. Based in Italy, the Fifteenth Air Force flew strategic bombing raids over southern Germany, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. Less celebrated than the Eighth Air Force, which flew out of England, the Fifteenth, nevertheless, was pivotal in dismantling the German industrial complex. Myers offers an insider’s view of these missions over southern and central Europe. The reader goes with him into the highly exposed Plexiglas nose of the Flying Fortress, flying with him through the flak-filled skies of Europe and peering with him through his Norden bombsight at Axis targets. On average, a heavy-bomber crewman survived only sixteen bombing missions. Myers survived his allotted thirty-five missions before being honorably discharged in 1945.

On a wintry morning in 1952, young Lt. Arthur L. Haarmeyer reported for duty in Korea as a B-26 bombardier-navigator to Colonel Delwin Bentley, Commander, 95th Bomb Squadron, 17th Bomb Group, K-9 Air Force Base, Pusan. Haarmeyer was immediately challenged by the colonel: "You've got an MBA from a high-priced university. You could be riding a desk at the Pentagon right now. So why the hell are you here?" His reply--"I always wanted to be here, sir. I can be an accountant later"--was apparently convincing. But over the next seven months, flying fifty missions, mostly low-level nighttime bombing and strafing raids over mountainous North Korea, there were times when he had reason to question the sanity of both his response and his decision. In this book Haarmeyer recalls with clarity and economy of style just what it was like to fly these missions. He puts the reader in the B-26, flying into deep valleys to find and attack communist freight trains and truck convoys carrying men and materiel to the front lines, and then being unexpectedly caught in the sudden and blinding glare of enemy searchlights that triggered multiple streams of deadly and upward-arcing green or white tracers. And he recalls instances of agony, guilt, and terror: such as the times when the flak was so heavy on all sides that he was unable to advise his pilot to "break right" or "break left"-so their B-26 just simply plowed straight through it, or when they flew low enough for Haarmeyer to see, through the Plexiglas of the nose compartment, the terrified faces of the young North Korean soldiers they were targeting. He also recalls moments of breathtaking beauty and poignancy, and it is this artful juxtaposition that makes Haarmeyer's work more than just another wartime memoir. Although Haarmeyer left the Air Force upon completion of his three-year contract of military service, the recurring and troubling memories of Korea never left him. Hence, the start of this manuscript fifty years after the restoration of freedom to the people of the Republic of Korea. Just as telling these stories was therapeutic for the author, so reading them will be healing for any reader who is a veteran of that or any war, as well as their family members and friends. The book also provides a valuable perspective on the United Nations Command's tactical approach to Korea, namely, the aerial interdiction of North Korean troops and materiel, and so it will be of interest to students of the war, as well as military personnel and historians.

A funny, lyrical, and piercingly insightful essay collection about gender and sexuality, by trans writer and artist Cooper Lee Bombardier.