Product Description

Eighth Air Force received glowing reviews in hardback alongside Patrick Bishop's Bomber Boys - 'They complement each other superbly, encapsulating the best modern scholarship on the subject', said Andrew Roberts in The Times. It reprinted quickly, and has sold steadily in hardback even at GBP25. Now it makes an ideal impulse-buy paperback. The Bomber War in World War II was waged by two forces: the Lancasters and Halifaxes of the RAF's Bomber Command, and the Flying fortresses and Liberators of the American Eighth Air Force. Thousands of young Americans flew hundreds of raids over Germany, bombing by day in huge formations, attacking industrial plants, oil refineries and cities, in desperately dangerous missions from which the numbers who never returned was appallingly high. But between Pearl Harbor and the Normandy landings the bomber war was the only way the Allies could take the way directly to Germany in Europe, making every town and factory the frontline. Donald Miller's history covers the individual destinies, the notorious raids like Schweinfurt-Regensburg and Dresden, the social transformation of sleepy East Anglian villages by an influx of hundreds of good-time young Yanks, the POW camps in which many of them ended up, and the endless controversy about the ethics of area and terror bombing. Donald Miller is John Henry McCracken Professor of History at Lafayette Colle in Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174662 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

Review
* '[A] magnificent history... It is impossible not to be carried along by Miller's passion for his subject' Daily Telegraph

Customer Reviews

Almost perfect...
I already read a great deal of interesting books on this subjet, so when I purchased this title, my initial thoughts were that I wondered whether this pretty voluminous work would succeed in keeping me hooked on its contents. It pretty well did! The obvious strength lies in the wide angle which Donald Miller has used when dealing with this subject. Apart from the "Bomber Boys" and their Heavies, he spent quite a bit of attention to other - often not so popular and therefore less known - elements, all of which offers the reader a beautiful, near complete and detailed picture of what this mighty group of soldiers' stay in England meant and how it left a permanent mark on local life. The "small stories" (petite histoire in French) offer a welcome change to the vividly described operational accounts. Great contribution too about those brave people in occupied Europe, who assisted shot down airmen with getting them back to their base, and the chapters about the crews in the Stalags and DuLags are both moving and breathtaking. As such this book is most recommended reading for all interested in the Mighty Eighth and airwar in general. The reason I deducted the one star is that I can not quite understand why one of the most interesting, recent and major contributions of the airwar written by Jörg Friedrich, is missing from immense list of pubications and books the author has relied on to write this massive work.

Comprehensive, sympathetic but not uncritical account
This account of the American 8th Air Force daylight raids tackles all three of the major issues: the strategic background that provides the context; the individual histories that illuminate the detail of the strategy; and a review, in passing, of the ethical issues involved.

As might be expected by a historian of Miller's calibre (his works have been nominated for every major American literary award) the work is balanced; the background research comprehensive and the narrative well-crafted. This is likely to be the definitive work on the subject for some years, since the book is so comprehensive and benefits from astute comment brought about by the author's familiarity with the breadth of the source material.

Almost perfect!
This is a fine book which I really enjoyed reading and which added greatly to my understanding of the European air war. However, there are a couple of surprisingly basic mistakes. The Battle Of Britain was in 1940, not 1941 and the Germans surrendered to Montgomery on 4 May, not Eisenhower on 7 May. What the author is referring to was an artificial show which was created and stage-managed for Eisenhower, the Russians and the media. The surrender had already taken place.