Publisher's Synopsis
Masters of the Air is a narrative history of the bomber war in World War Two. The U.S. had two air forces conducting strategic bombing in Europe during the war, the Eighth and the Fifteenth. The Eighth was the more powerful and was the one that bombed Germany. Masters of the Air is the story of the Eighth Air Force.
Masters of the Air takes readers into battle with the crews, freezing in the air in unheated, unpressurized aircraft. It takes readers to East Anglia, where nearly a quarter of a million Eighth Air Force personnel were stationed, many living among their English hosts. Air men had comforts unknown to the infantry: beds with clean sheets, nights at the local pubs. But they faced far worse odds than any other branch of the armed services.
At the centre of the story is a single bomb group, the Hundredth, known as the Bloody Hundredth for its heavy casualties. Masters of the Air follows the Bloody Hundredth from basic training to the end of the war, when the POWs were reunited with their comrades back in England. Masters of the Air deftly mixes the strategic with the personal, giving the reader a riveting account of the bomber war while at the same time telling us unforgettable stories about the young men who flew these planes.
