We Were Eagles

On 4 July 1942, American airmen flew in US-built bombers against a German target for the first time. It was a small operation involving six US crews in Boston medium bombers, but was nonetheless a harbinger of things to come. The first heavy bombardment group of B-17s had crossed the Atlantic in June 1942, another arriving by 1 August, marking the first steps in the massive build-up of B-17s and B-24s that would be based in Britain as part of the Eighth Air Force. This book, illustrated with both black-and-white and period colour pictures, tells the story of US Eighth Air Force operations in the words of the men who flew on them, from that initial raid over the Netherlands and the first attack by the Fortresses on Rouen to the opening mission against Germany itself and the famous B-24 raid against the Romanian oilfields at Ploesti.

Volume 3 of We Were Eagles covers the turning of the tide, when the air war was redirected to bombing communications targets in northern France in support of the 6 June D-Day invasion and the eventual breakout by Allied forces from the beachheads. Once the Normandy battle was won, missions were resumed against oil targets, factories, communications and other strategic targets. Often crews nursed their blasted and burning Liberators and Flying Fortresses back with flak holes and damage from fighter attacks, including from the new German jet fighters, with feathered props and dead and wounded on board, but those that survived went out again the next day, the day after and the day after that, until their combat tour of thirty and later thirty-five missions was completed. A host of rank and file air crew members describe these raids in vivid detail and with clarity and vigour. They tell of laughter, friendship, death, fear, exhilaration, stupidity, superstitions, discipline and indiscipline. Also, of course, the sheer horrors faced mission after mission by the 'boys in the sky', together with the personal deprivations experienced by the ordinary British men, women and children.