The Missiles of Zajecar

Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1969. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. David Meltzer. [8], 155, [5] pages. References. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Inscribed by the author on the fep. Inscription reads To Michael with best wishes -- Bill Hallstead Ruxton, Md. Christmas, 1975. The story of the rocket factory near Zajecar and the campaign to destroy it is fiction. But the Nazis actually did develop several surface-to-air missiles late in World War II, although too late to use them effectively. Similarly, the Azon guided bomb was used by the USAAF in the closing months of World War II, and later models were employed in Korea. Mr. Hallstead has underlaid his story with solid technical fact. His B-24s and Focke-Wulf 190s are portrayed as accurately as research permits. Much of the background he has lived himself, from the inside out, as a crew member on a B-24 Liberator in the 15th Air Force during World War II. Details of aircraft described in the story are as accurate as research permits. The 456th Bomb Group (H) and the 747th Squadron were based near Cerignola, Italy, and the base was much as described. However, the events in the story, and the cast of characters, with the exception of General Graz Mihailovic and Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, are entirely fictitious. The author apologizes for the sentimental use of the 456th Group and the 747th Squadron designations. They were the group and squadron in which he served as a B-24 radio operator/gunner in 1945. The guarded race by German science to perfect a highly effective anti-aircraft missile and the frantic efforts by a special unit of the American 15th Air Force to destroy the research base. Davis Paul Meltzer was born in 1930, in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, and attended school in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Both his parents, the late Arthur Meltzer and Paulette Van Roekens, were highly respected fine art painters—and he inherited their great talent. During his career as a freelance artist he created stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, painted dozens of sci-fi book covers, worked for NASA, and worked as a scientific illustrator for 30 years at National Geographic.