US Eighth Air Force in Europe

Using narrative accounts and new insights, this book catalogues the dramatic and first-hand oral testimonies of the US Army Air Corps' bomber crews of the newly created Eighth Air Force that became stationed in East Anglia in 1942. It begins with shock of the unannounced Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and how it affected the young men who were destined to fly and fight in Europe. American troops, or GIs as they were known because of their own derisive term of 'General Issue', began arriving in war-weary Britain in the months immediately after Pearl Harbor. Bomber and fighter groups made an especial impact. The young Americans with their well-cut uniforms, new accents and money, created a colourful heroic chapter in the lives of the British people that is still remembered today. The Americans and the villagers and townsfolk of East Anglia shared a close attachment that only wartime can create. England between 1942-45 was a battle front. The civilians were all involved in the war effort - as shipyard and factory workers, Red Cross and Land Army, farmers and firemen. Above all they were stubborn, determined fighters who had already endured more than three years of war. Into these lives came the sights and sounds - particularly the jargon - of the Americans, unprepared for the difficulties of flying in Britain's and Northern Europe's unpredictable and difficult weather. It is the story of the American's first encounters with the Luftwaffe, heavy Nazi air defences and the wartime strictures that Britain had already endured for three years. These are their memories.

This book describes the period when the American daylight offensive faltered and nearly failed and recalls the terrible losses suffered by Liberators on the low-level attack on the Ploesti oilfields in Rumania and by the B—17s on the notorious Schweinfurt and Regensburg raids which entered 8th Air Force folklore as Black Thursday. Fascinating anecdotes, eye-witness accounts and the hard-won experiences of the battle-scarred American fly-boys reveal the grim realities of air combat at four miles high above enemy occupied Europe, Berlin and the Ruhr. Grown up in the war they paint a revealing picture as only they can. The Mighty Eighth was an air force of hard-fighting, hard-playing fliers who suffered more casualties than the entire US Marine Corps in the Pacific Campaign. Here, in their own words are stories of survival and soul-numbing loss, of fly-boys who came together to fight an air war of the ferocity that had never been fought on such a vast scale before. While RAF Bomber Command was waging war at night, the 8th Air Force B—17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators bombed by day in a 24-hour round the clock campaign. This is also a partly a strategic history with a behind-the-scenes look at deployment of the bomber groups and the fighter escorts that would eventually become their salvation on the interminable deep penetration raids into the Greater Reich.