8th Air force

American Heavy Bomber Groups in England, 1942-45

Until the Normandy invasion on June 6 1944, Allied bombers had been the only means to bring the fire of war into enemy ranks.

Their almost daily actions, in daylight for the USAAF, at night by the Royal Air Force, sustained a war front in the West. The limited accuracy of these thousands of raids was offset by hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, of which good a number worked, voluntarily or under restraint, in the German armament industry. Nevertheless, it is certain that the daylight bombing offensive waged by the American Air Forces, while costly in men and machines, was a permanent threat for Germany and allowed for some relief on the Eastern front.

The Luftwaffe, constantly provoked into battle, was literally worn threadbare. The hard-won Allied air supremacy was therefore a major factor in final victory in Europe. Even if actual German aircraft production was not weakened by the bombing raids, the dearth of trained pilots, the harassment of the transportation network and the utter destruction of fuel plants brought the Nazis to their knees.

Let us look at the faces of these men, we owe them our freedom.

This book is dedicated to the memory of the 47.000 airmen of the 8th Air Force who gave their lives in the prosecution of the air war in the European Theater of Operations.