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Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, by Donald L. Miller
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The riveting history of the American Eighth Air Force in World War Two, the story of the young men who flew the bombers that helped bring Nazi Germany to its knees, brilliantly told by historian Donald Miller and soon to be a major HBO series.
Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.
Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured US air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers.
The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America—white America, anyway. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.
Masters of the Air is a story of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.
Drawn from recent interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, Masters of the Air is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world’s first and only bomber war.
- Sales Rank: #72962 in Books
- Brand: Miller, Donald L.
- Published on: 2007-09-25
- Released on: 2007-09-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.80" w x 6.12" l, 1.75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 688 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Historian Miller (D-Days in the Pacific) chronicles the story of the U.S. Eighth Air Force in this sprawling, authoritative narrative of the "largest aerial striking force in the war." The Eighth arrived in England in 1942 to engage in "a new kind of warfare": unescorted "high-altitude strategic bombing." In addition to destroying Germany's war-making capacity, the Eighth hoped to validate its "extravagant claim that air power alone would bring down the Reich" and to win autonomy for the air force. As Miller demonstrates, the "hubris of the bomber barons" was misplaced, and the "record of the Eighth Air Force is mixed." Not only did victory require boots on the ground but the air war became a bloody "war of attrition." The Eighth suffered 26,000 combat deaths, a 12.3% fatality rate topped only by submarine crews. Drawing on exhaustive research in oral histories, diaries and government documents, Miller evenhandedly recounts the Eighth's successes and failures, emphasizing the stoic heroism of the crews who flew the missions. That diverse lot included celebrities like the actors Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable and anonymous fliers like 21-year-old Lt. Chuck Yeager. This eloquent tribute to America's bomber boys should prove popular among fans of military history. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Miller's massive, readable volume may prove to be the standard history of the Eighth Air Force. From 1942 to 1945, the men and planes of the Eighth fought the Luftwaffe, English weather, shortages of men and material, and the flaws in the original concept of strategic bombing. Only when fighter escorts all the way to the targets became available did the Eighth and its "little friends" perform the vital task of defeating German airpower. The book pays detailed tribute to the men, from movie stars like Clark Gable to ordinary mechanics, who performed the thousand-and-one tasks, from piloting to cooking, that kept the Eighth flying. It also offers a view from the other side, that of the Germans under the bombs, although in so doing it may not (still!) please obstinate foes of strategic bombing or of the "Greatest Generation" concept. Everyone else may rank this book with Roger Freeman's The Mighty Eighth (1970; rev. ed., 1986) as definitive about its subject. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Masters of the Air is a piece of history that accurately and comprehensively tells the story of the Eighth Air Force going mano a mano against a tough and determined foe. The incredible cost to both sides is recounted in riveting detail. It left me shaken."
-- Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret.) and coauthor of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
"Miller's work is always extraordinary but this large volume is especially remarkable for its valuable recovery of details, like all the psychiactric ruin of the many bomber boys assigned to kill German civilians. This is a rare account of the American Eighth Air Force, and with so many readers hoodwinked by fantasies of The Good War, it deserves wide acceptance and ultimate enshrinement as a classic."
-- Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory
"When I learned that Don Miller had written a history of the air war against Germany, I knew that readers would be transported as virtual eye witnesses to this aerial battle field. His gripping reconstruction of what was happening in the planes is matched by the best account yet of what the bombings were doing to Germans on the ground. This book bears the Miller trademark: a strong narrative supported by solid history."
-- Joseph E. Persico, author of Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day 1918
"Masters of the Air is a fresh new account of the incredible rise of the American air force from young men learning their trade on the job in combat to an irresistible force that swept the vaunted Luftwaffe from the skies. Author Donald L. Miller knits together the big events of the bombing campaign with illuminating individual human stories of the heroes who lived and died over Germany."
-- Walter J. Boyne, former director, National Air and Space Museum
"Over the first years of World War II, the only American casualties on European soil were flyboys shot out of the sky. Long before Normandy, America's bomber boys waged the Allies' longest WWII campaign and brought the war to Hitler. Now we are fortunate that the incomparable Donald Miller has brought the memory of these Masters of the Air back to us."
-- James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys
"Masters of the Air is masterful narrative history, the elegantly interwoven story of the men and boys who first took the war to the heart of Germany. Vivid and meticulous, judicious but not judgmental, Donald L. Miller chronicles the air war over Europe in all its heroism and horror."
-- Geoffrey C. Ward, author of Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
"Donald L. Miller's Masters of the Air is a stunning achievement. The compound effect of the book's narrative vitality and attention to human detail is terrific in all the meanings of the word - terrifying, extraordinary, highly admirable. What a story it is!"
-- David McCullough
"Masters of the Air is a direct hit."
-- Allan R. Millett, Director, Eisenhower Center for American Studies, University of New Orleans
"For sixty years we have waited for a history to equal the epic saga of the Eighth Air Force's struggle with fighters, flak and weather on a battlefield moving at three miles per minute five miles above the earth's crust. Now it is here. With brilliant artistry, Don Miller paints the story from the pallet of the voices of the men who manned the planes or waited them out."
-- Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Most helpful customer reviews
110 of 112 people found the following review helpful.
Enlightens and Entertains
By Nesmuck
Every once in a long while we delight and surprise ourselves when we pick up a book that enlightens and entertains. It's the pinnacle of excellence reached by but a few non-fiction writers. Miller is one of those writers. His book, the story of the Eighth Air Force, is one of equal parts bravery, terror, and glamour, with some of its men becoming the most celebrated personalities the war. Miller chronicles the heroic feats of Robert Morgan, pilot of the legendary Memphis Belle; of Paul Tibbets, who later would fly the Enola Gay on the A-bomb mission to Hiroshima; of Curtis LeMay, the most celebrated combat leader of the bomber war; and--one of the key figures of the book--of Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal, leader of the Bloody Hundredth, who flew 52 combat missions, was shot down three times, and later became a member of the team of prosecuting attorneys at the Nuremberg Trials.
Although remembered by few alive today, their exploits were captured for the home front by gritty young reporters such as Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney. Unlike many of the talking heads who populate our TV news, these men flew combat missions with the Bomber Boys risking their lives, not for ratings, but because they wanted to remind all the mothers and fathers wives and children back home why our cause was just.
But the most interesting thing that struck me while reading this book is that while it tells the tales of celebrities such as Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, William Wyler and the like, it also reminds us that these brave men, these truly heroic men, who flew harrowing missions, were our fathers and grandfathers. They were young men, some of them just out of high school, who were just like us or our children. It's a book filled with almost mythical heroes, men bigger than life yet real enough to be your neighbor. In an era saturated with pretend celebrities and steroid saturated athletes, this is a book that you should read to your children.
73 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
This is a beautiful but chilling story of an awesome era
By Theodore A. Rushton
This book is awesome.
It is awesome because of its balanced and thorough analysis of the air war that pulverized Germany, a war now sentimentally known as "the good war" when Americans pulverized their enemies with the ease of comic book heroes.
"'Tain't so, Magee." Comic book heroes never had such courage.
Instead, think of the 80 percent casualty rate of the US Eighth Air Force in its early years as book theory met killing reality in conditions that stagger modern imaginations. I've flown in a B-17; it is huge on the outside, inside it is a tiny tube filled with equipment, supplies and hundreds of sharp objects that hurt when you are bumped, slip or are thrown about. Think of riding inside your computer on a truck bouncing down a bumpy mountain road and having to write an A-plus story en route.
So much for creature comfort. Put it all in air colder than Antarctica. Paint a big star on the side as a target, then send it into the sky for hours at a time. Soldiers on the ground sheltered in foxholes and bunkers; the skin of a B-17 was beer-can-thin aluminum. The plane is like a vast Tinkertoy riveted into an amazingly strong and yet frightfully vulnerable structure. It is a mighty aircraft, yet thin enough that a pigeon could penetrate it and injure crewmen.
This is the reality of the bomber offensive. Miller presents it in awesome, chilling detail. Unlike most histories, it isn't a lone portrait of some brave men; instead, it includes chilling accounts from all. One account is of an American pilot flying with his elbows because his hands were blown off, another is of German children who roasted to death in their flaming cities.
He spares neither the folly of American planners who thought their aircraft and tactics would be invincible and quickly effective, and the terrible folly of Germans who had worse delusions. The air war was a battle in which neither side surrendered; both fought until only one was left flying.
Miller offers a convincing argument that victory in World War II was not inevitable, it was based on pure courage. No wonder World War II veterans are 'The Greatest Generation". Without their courage, far and above all expectations, orders or threats, the vast production of war material would have become a vast junkpile.
There are many great books about the air war. This one has an advantage over most if not all because it draws many disparate facts, threads, ideas, opinions and follies into a comprehensive portrait. It is awesome, because it is a story of awesome courage.
52 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
A superlative account of the American air campaign over Europe
By Jerry Saperstein
As a WWII history buff, the highlight of my one and only trip to Europe was crossing the Dutch coast and asking myelf how could the boys - and that's what they really were - of the Eighth Air Force have done this raid after raid, knowing that they were likely flying toward their own death. Until late 1944, the odds were against an 8th Air Force crew member surviving their tour.
Donald L. Miller answers that question and many others in his absolutely superlative history of the American air war over Germany. (Not taking anything away from Miller's work is that suggestion that you also read Max Hasting's "Bomber Command" for a view of the very different English air war.)
Miller alternates between first person accounts of crew members and their missions, the leaders, the campaign objectives, assessments of the impact of the various phases of the air war and the enemy reaction. It may sound confusing, but because of Miller's extraordinary writing and the seamless organization of his meticulously researched material, it is not.
In fact, Miller does an exceptional job of conveying the fear of the crew, the blind faith of the leaders in the doctrine of aerial bombing, the grim realities that had to be faced all down the line as men realized that the unsupported bomber was not an impregnable "Flying Fortress". Miller weaves each part of the incredibly complex air war and its combatants together. From gunners to pilots to generals to the men who selected the targets and argued over strategy, Miller allows the multiple stories to develop and blossum and then moves on to another.
Miller is careful to distinguish the American campaign of "precision" bombing from the more candidly terror oriented British campaign of "area" bombing. The distinction became extremely thin and possibly non-existent in the final few months of the war.
Arguments still rage as to whether or not the bombing campaigns truly contributed to war against Germany. Miller is, fortunately, not judgmental. What he does stress is the incredible courage shown by American airmen in their campaign against Germany. While Miller does not recount the episode in this book, Herman Goering is reported to have told his interrogators that he could not believe that German fighters were unable to turn a single American bomber force from its intended target.
Miller's reach is essentially encyclopedic in this book. No aspect of the American air war over Europe is left untouched. The scholarship is simply staggering. Miller's alternation between stories of individual "bomber boys" and their selection, training, fighting, deaths, injuries, imprisonment when captured, rescues and finally the end of war interspersed with examination of the history of air warfare, the development of machines and weapons, strategy and tactics is exceptionally well done.
"Masters Of The Air" never becomes dry or pedantic. It is always intense and one cannot help but marvel at the courage, tenacity and genius of "America's bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany." A wonderful addition to the library of anyone with an interest in history.
Jerry
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