Donald Nijboer - The Mighty Eighth: Masters of the Air over Europe 1942–45

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This electronic edition published in 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain in 2022

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ISBN: 978-1-4728-5421-6 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-5422-3 (eBook)
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Index by Alison Worthington

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Title page (top image): This fully armed B-17F Thunderbird was designated war-weary in late 1943. Many worn-out airframes were quickly used as VIP transports or whiskey haulers. With their stretched control cables and tired engines, pilots often found them a challenge to fly. (Authors collection)

Title page (bottom image): Minus its drop tanks, this 360th Fighter Group P-51D serial no. 44-15056 has just completed another long-range escort mission in April 1945. The group consisted of the 359th, 360th, and 361st Fighter squadrons. Even with the bubble canopy, this Mustang still has a rear-view mirror attached on the top of the forward canopy bow. (Authors collection)

Contents

When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, it had a small air force with approximately 1,100 aircraft, which included 700 bombers of all types. The Eighth Air Force, which was to control bombing and fighter missions over Europe, did not yet exist. As a result of an agreement between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, reached nine months before the United States even entered the war, priority was to be given to the defeat of Germany, and hence the majority of American assets were designated for service in Europe. Those assets would soon form the Eighth Air Force. In the months that followed it became one of the most effective fighting forces the world had ever seen and master of the air war over Europe.

During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, less than ten years before America entered the war against Germany, a sense of ultimate faith, fostered by a clique of officers at the US Army Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) at Maxwell Field, Alabama, slowly but surely formed around the apparent invincibility and capabilities of the heavy bomber as a weapon of strategic offense. This faith eventually emerged as doctrine.

The root of this doctrine, and the cause of so much faith in the heavy bomber, has been attributed to a great extent to the hypothesis espoused by the (at the time) little-known Italian air power theorist, Giulio Douhet. He prophesied the brilliant and conquering future of the aerial bomber, derived from his personal experiences during Italys war against the Turks in 1911.

Translated into English by 1921, Douhets controversial theories were to transform military aviation doctrines around the globe, and many came to believe slavishly in the coming age of air power, envisaging fleets of high-flying bombers so well-armed that they would fend offand even destroyan enemys disorganized and outnumbered fighter forces.