We Were Eagles

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.

Volume 4 of We Were Eagles reaches the climax of the daylight bomber war which saw the Eighth Air Force B-17s and B-24s push back the boundaries and huge fleets of bombers penetrate further into the diminishing Reich. The war dragged on and it was obvious hostilities would not end by Christmas 1944. The German breakthrough in the Ardennes which became known as the 'Battle of the Bulge' only delayed the inevitable. Allied air power helped stop and finally end the short-lived offensive and by January 1945, before the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the Third Reich was on the brink of defeat and victory in Europe was assured. For the Eighth there were raids as far afield as Leipzig, Dresden, southern Germany and Czechoslovakia. Although air power did not win the war on its own, the war could not have been won without it. This is an evocative testimony to the memory and sacrifice of the American airmen who served in Europe with the Eighth Air Force and a tribute to the annals of American aviation in the Second World War.

The Americans' second year of the war saw the Eighth Air Force finally bombing Berlin, or 'Big-B' as it was known. The arrival in the theatre of an ever-increasing number of escort fighters, such as the P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang, meant that the close-knit formations of bombers could roam further afield without the punitive losses suffered a year earlier. 'Little Friends' rode to the rescue of their 'Big Friends' but 'tail-end Charlies' could be cut down almost unnoticed and 'unlucky' groups such as the 'Bloody Hundredth' and the 445th Bomb Group B-24 Liberators who roamed too far suffered grievously. An Allied victory was never in doubt and the air offensive hastened its end but German aircraft production never faltered despite the assault on the war industries. City bombing failed to break German spirit, enemy oil still flowed and jet planes would offer the enemy hope, and the bomber boys pain. In this second volume, Martin W. Bowman tells the story of the Eighth Air Force's campaign over Germany and Occupied Europe in the words of the men who flew the missions.