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Includes history of various bomb groups, pictures and biographies of bombardiers, and history of the development of bombing equipment.
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.
This wartime biography follows the life of a Second World War B-17 bombardier from the beginning of the war to its conclusion. Based on the 150 letters the airman, Fred Lull, wrote home to his mother, much of the horrors of what he experienced off the wing of his plane, aircraft destroyed, dismemberment by flak, go unshared. Fred did not want his mother to worry and could not tell her: ‘I noticed some movement and a flash of light out of the corner of my right eye. The plane that had been flying right next to us had exploded and simply disappeared.’ Using the bombardier’s combat flight record, research data and interviews of former B-17 crew members, the story unfolds, breaking through the barrier of an unwillingness and inability to tell loved ones of the smell and taste of war.
His combat tour over, a survivor of thirty-four bombing missions as an 8th Air Force bombardier, Charles Norm Stevens wonders what he will do next. He would have his 30-day furlough, but that will pass quickly. What then? Having endured the hell of his bombing missions, he has no desire to sign up for another tour. Even though the Allies are gaining on all fronts, the war still rages, and he is still on active duty in the Army Air Corps. He is a trained bombardier who will continue his military service. But in what capacity? Turning down the option of being an instructor, he volunteers for training as a radar bombardier. But where would this lead him? He sees himself slowly being drawn into the Pacific War as a radar bombardier on a B-29 Superfortress. It is a gamble. Would the war end or would he find himself again in hostile skies? Stevens previously wrote about his cadet and crew training in The Innocent Cadet Becoming a World War II Bombardier and his combat experiences in An Innocent at Polebrook: Memoir of an 8th Air Force Bombardier. This volume completes his military experience.
In 1942, Glenn W. King was in his first semester at the University of Wyoming-Laramie when he joined the United States Army Air Forces. He became a bombardier with the 385th Bombardment Group, flying from England's Great Ashfield airbase. On his twenty-third combat mission, Glenn's plane was shot down near Oschatz, Germany. He was picked up by the Wehrmacht and sent to Stalag Luft XIIID, a prisoner of war camp in Nuremberg. Starvation was the order of the day. Forced to march more than one hundred miles to Stalag Luft VIIA in Moosburg, Glenn and his fellow officers began to "liberate" potatoes and turnips (and the occasional chicken) from the farmers along the roadway. A can of tuna, part of a Red Cross food parcel, was tucked into his sodden coat pocket. Every morning, he vowed to hold on to it for just one more day. This is Glenn's incredible story of resilience in the waning days of the Second World War and his safe return home to complete college and pursue an engineering career in the petroleum industry. Bombardier, roustabout, roughneck, student, husband, father, oil executive, public speaker, arbitrator, crime fighter, and car guy. His has been no ordinary life.
Combat Bombardier By Leonard Herman with Rob Morris Rarely does a living legend tell such a candid and fascinating tale. In his memoirs, ́Combat Bombardier: A Jewish Airman's Two Tours of Duty in the Skies Over Europe in World War Two ́ , 90-year-old Eighth and Ninth Air Force bombardier Leonard Herman tells the story of his experiences as one of the few surviving airmen of the first desperate months of the American bomber war. Less than twenty percent of his fellows from the original 95th Bomb Group (H) survived their tours without death or imprisonment. Mr. Herman survived his initial twenty-five mission tour in 1943, flying many of the air war's greatest missions, including Schweinfurt and Kiel. His pilot was killed and he himself wounded on a mission during his this tour. He is credited with shooting down two German fighters, and also with twice saving the lives of his crew, which earned him a nomination for the Medal of Honor. After his return to a hero's welcome in the States, Mr. Herman completed a War Bond Tour, trained fliers preparing to go overseas, and then returned to Europe himself, where he flew missions in B-26s and A-26s in support of Allied ground forces with the Bridge Busters. In addition to this second flight tour, Mr. Herman also found himself on the ground with the infantry in Germany near the end of the war, where he liberated a castle and guarded 3,000 German prisoners. At the war's end, he was instrumental in changing U.S. policy towards liberated concentration camp survivors. He ended the war as one of the Air Corps' most highly decorated airmen. Historical figures grace its pages. Mr. Herman knew many of the key figures in the early air war, such as Curtis LeMay and Nathan Bedford Forrest. His tail gunner, William Crossley, was the top gunner ace in Europe in World War Two. He served as the unofficial collector of stories for the 95th Bomb Group and the stories eventually became B-17s Over Berlin, edited by Ian Hawkins and considered one of the finest oral histories of the air war. Mr. Herman's friend, historian Rob Morris, has written an introduction which sets the tone and serves as a biographical sketch of Mr. Herman. The remainder of the book is in Mr. Herman's words, with Morris's comments interspersed only to explicate passages. A fluid and interesting story-teller, Mr. Herman's narrative is honest, unflinching, at times profane, but always enlightening and entertaining, and more than occasionally hilarious. Mr. Herman also carried a camera on missions and has some excellent and terrifying shots of air combat. The book's fast-paced, easy-to-read style is the result of countless interviews and taped recollections that will appeal to experts and casual readers. It is a very human story that will add to the existing scholarship on the WWII air war and increase understanding of the men who fought in it. Mr. Herman ́s book contains graphic language, some adult situations, and, as it is a war memoir, violence. It is not suitable for children.
Air warfare was a decisive component of World War II, especially in western Europe and over Japan, where Allied bombers damaged 66 of the country's largest cities. The guts and glory of the bomber crews came, however, with a high casualty rate which had only improved marginally by the war's end. Descriptions of the bombers' harrowing missions told from the firsthand perspective of their pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners create the immediacy of a single person's experience during one of America's most daring military expeditions. A short biography of each veteran accompanies these tales of typical and not-so-typical missions.
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.
Rise of the War Machines: The Birth of Precision Bombing in World War II examines the rise of autonomy in air warfare from the inception of powered flight through the first phase of the Combined Bomber Offensive in World War II. Raymond P. O’Mara builds a conceptual model of humans, machines, and doctrine that demonstrates a distinctly new way of waging warfare in human-machine teams. Specifically, O’Mara examines how the U.S. Army’s quest to control the complex technological and doctrinal system necessary to execute the strategic bombing mission led to the development of automation in warfare. Rise of the War Machines further explores how the process of sharing both physical and cognitive control of the precision bombing system established distinct human-machine teams with complex human-to—human and human-to-machine social relationships. O’Mara presents the precision bombing system as distinctly socio-technical, constructed of interdependent specially trained roles (the pilot, navigator, and bombardier); purpose-built automated machines (the Norden bombsight, specialized navigation tools, and the Minneapolis-Honeywell C-1 Autopilot); and the high-altitude, daylight bombing doctrine, all of which mutually shaped each other’s creation and use.