Caveat Emptor: Jay A. Stout is a good friend of mine.  That said, it is very easy to recommend this book very highly, both for the quality of the information found therein, and for the quality of the story-telling and writing.

          Jay A.  Stout has established a fine reputation as a historian of Second World War aviation with his books “Fortress Ploesti,” “The Men Who Killed The Luftwaffe,” “Unsung Eagles” and “Fighter Group.”  That reputation for solid research, excellent interviews with surviving veterans, and eminently-readable writing continues with this new book, “Hell’s Angels: The True Story of the 303^rd Bomb Group in World War II.”

          As with “Fighter Group,” this is not just a history of who did what when and where.  Stout covers not only the aircrews but the ground crews without whom no one would have accomplished anything, and brings the reader into their everyday lives in such a personal way that one can put the book down at the end feeling they have a good understanding of what it was like to be a member of a group like the 303^rd.  The book deals with the drudgery of working through a cold English night to be sure a bomber was ready in the morning, the fear faced by the crews as the sat through a briefing, the tension tinged by boredom and lit by moments of terror during a mission.  As my agent says, a writer of this kind of work should be able to say to the publisher that what will be produced is “a character-centered narrative history.”  Those words definitely apply to “Hell’s Angels.”

          The 303^rd, one of the leading groups of the Eighth Air Force, has somehow been overlooked by history, certainly overshadowed by such organizations as the 91^st Bomb Group.  It’s long been time for this story to be told; the members of the group are fortunate that the writer who chose to tell their story was Stout, whose own experience as a Marine combat pilot gives him a perspective few other aviation history writers can bring to such a subject.

          The 303^rd Bomb Group arrived in England in the fall of 1942, part of the “second wave” of groups to be assigned to the Eighth Air Force.  They took their name from that of the B-17F “Hell’s Angels,” which was the first Flying Fortress to survive 25 missions over Europe.  Stout tells the full story of how Air Force public relations dictated that the rough-and-tumble “Hell’s Angels” was considered too risque to be the headliner of a major cross-country publicity campaign back home, with the result that history has declared for the past 72 years that “Memphis Belle” was the first.  (In fact, the first Eight Air Force bomber to make it to 25 was the B-24D “Hot Stuff”; the “Belle” was #3) Stout tells the stories of other famous aircraft of the group and their crews, like “Knockout Dropper,” the first B-17 to reach 75 and later 100 missions.

          Stout puts the personal stories of the men and the history of the group into the larger context of the Eight Air Force’s campaign against Nazi Germany, taking the reader through the stages of the campaign: the tentative missions over France, the unescorted daylight raids into Germany that were actually defeated by the Luftwaffe, the re-birth of the Eighth with new bomb groups and fighter escort, the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the spring of 1944, and the destruction of Germany between D-Day and V-E Day.

          As a historian myself, I particularly value readability; too many historians get too bogged down in detail and forget they are telling an interesting story.  Not so here!  Jay Stout is one of the most readable military historians, making it easy to open the book and a joy to move through it.

          I’ve been reading histories of the Eighth Air Force for over 50 years now.  “Hell’s Angels” is definitely one of the best.  If you can only get a few books on the topic, make sure this is one of them.  Buy.  In.  Confidence.

Tom Cleaver

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