In the battle to win WWII, the USAAF felt that the best way to defeat Germany, and Japan as well, was to bomb the nation into submission. It was felt that by destroying their manufacturing base, their will to fight would falter and they would sue for peace. We have discovered over the years that while this helps, it does not exactly do what is intended and often steels the population to greater determination.

The USAAF felt that precision daylight bombing would be a better way to do things than the British method of carpet bombing large population areas. While the USAAF method did not eliminate civilian casualties, it still killed a lot of people on the ground. This was particularly troubling in the early raids when the targets were not in Germany but in occupied Europe.

It was also felt that the B-17 and B-27 long range bombers had sufficient defensive armament to hold off enemy fighters. This also proved to be a fallacy and while losses were originally not all that high (anything over 15% loss per mission was considered catastrophic), they were still more than what was desired, especially as the defending Luftwaffe units learned the best ways to bring down these heavies.

So this book covers about the first year of the USAAF strategic bombing program and looks at things from both the USAAF and the Luftwaffe side of things. The book seems to cover each and every raid, providing insights and stories from the warring sides as well as giving us a much more accurate look at losses on both sides. This itself requires some good primary research as claims by both sides were often a bit exaggerated. This was especially true of the US bomber crews whose claims were so exaggerated as to basically wipe out the entire Luftwaffe fighter force in western Europe every three or four missions! Each aircraft loss on both sides is as detailed as research can make it with information on each of the bombers brought down in terms of plane name, serial, unit and crew. Same with the Luftwaffe losses.

In addition to the superb mission coverage provided, we get to see a bunch of superb period photos of aircraft and crews of both sides. Typical of Kagero books, there are also several pages of excellent and large full color profiles of the aircraft involved. It makes for an excellent read and one that I have no trouble recommending to you.

June 2013

Review book courtesy of the fine folks at Kagero. Get yours from the link.

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