Donald L. Miller - Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

Praise for Masters of the Air

Donald L. Millers Masters of the Air is a stunning achievement. The compound effect of the books narrative vitality and attention to human detail is terrific in all the meanings of the wordterrifying, extraordinary, highly admirable. What a story it is!

David McCullough

[A] searching, thoroughly engrossing history of the American air war against Nazi Germany.... vividly recreates the day-to-day life of the men who flew the missions and their comrades on the ground.... unflinchingly describes the devastation wrought by the civilian bombing campaign and tackles the moral issues head-on.... Mr. Miller has a fluid way of moving from discussion of theory and tactics to the personal stories that give them human weight.

William Grimes, The New York Times

Over the first years of World War II, the only American casualties on European soil were flyboys shot out of the sky. Long before Normandy, Americas bomber boys waged the Allies longest WWII campaign and brought the war to Hitler. Now we are fortunate that the incomparable Donald Miller has brought the memory of these Masters of the Air back to us.

James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys

Millers work is always extraordinary but this large volume is especially remarkable for its valuable recovery of details, like all the psychiatric ruin of the many bomber boys assigned to kill German civilians. This is a rare account of the American Eighth Air Force, and with so many readers hoodwinked by fantasies of The Good War, it deserves wide acceptance and ultimate enshrinement as a classic.

Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory

Absorbing and exhaustive.... Miller leaves no doubt as to the contribution of the Eighth Air Force to defeating the Germans and helping end what could have been a much longer war.

Stephen J. Lyons, Chicago Tribune

Masters of the Air sucks the wind out of the reader.... It is a piece of history that accurately and comprehensively tells the story of the Eighth Air Force going mano a mano against a tough and determined foe. The incredible cost to both sides is recounted in riveting detail. It left me shaken.

Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret.) and coauthor of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

For sixty years we have waited for a history to equal the epic saga of the Eighth Air Forces struggle with fighters, flak and weather on a battlefield moving at three miles per minute five miles above the earths crust. Now it is here. With brilliant artistry, Don Miller paints the story from the palette of the voices of the men who manned the planes or waited them out.

Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

Millers book works on many levels: strategic critique, operational analysis and testimonial to the brave bomber boys who brought war home to Germany at a time when no other American force could. Masters of the Air is a terrific read, and I hereby designate it Book of the Year.

Robert Citino, World War II Magazine

A superlative chronicle.... a wonderful history.... Awesomely researched and written.

Library Journal

Masters of the Air is masterful narrative history, the elegantly interwoven story of the men and boys who first took the war to the heart of Germany. Vivid and meticulous, judicious but not judgmental, Donald L. Miller chronicles the air war over Europe in all its heroism and horror.

Geoffrey C. Ward, author of Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

A first-rate one-volume treatment of a vast subject, and one thats sure to satisfy.

Bruce Heydt, America in WWII Magazine

When I learned that Don Miller had written a history of the air war against Germany, I knew that readers would be transported as virtual eyewitnesses to this aerial battlefield. His gripping reconstruction of what was happening in the planes is matched by the best account yet of what the bombings were doing to Germans on the ground. This book bears the Miller trademark: a strong narrative supported by solid history.

Joseph E. Persico, author of Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day 1918

Millers massive, readable volume may prove to be the standard history of the Eighth Air Force.

Booklist

Absorbing and comprehensive.... Masters of the Air covers a lot of ground, both figuratively and literally.... Miller and his research assistants have read through a vast amount of the specialist literature as well as a lot of primary sources, and they have conducted numerous interviews with veterans.... [Miller] is admirably sane and clear about what the air war cost, on all sides, and also about what it achieved.

Fredric Smoler, American Heritage

Masters of the Air is a fresh new account of the incredible rise of the American air force from young men learning their trade on the job in combat to an irresistible force that swept the vaunted Luftwaffe from the skies. Author Donald L. Miller knits together the big events of the bombing campaign with illuminating individual human stories of the heroes who lived and died over Germany.

Walter J. Boyne, former director, National Air and Space Museum

Masters of the Air is a direct hit.

Allan R. Millett, Director, Eisenhower Center for American Studies, University of New Orleans

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To the gang at the Black Cat Bar: Alyssa, Alexis, Ashlee, Devin, Austin, and Mason

In the spring of 1944... we were masters in the air. The bitterness of the struggle had thrown a greater strain on the Luftwaffe than it was able to bear.... For our air superiority, which by the end of 1944 was to become air supremacy, full tribute must be paid to the United States Eighth Air Force.

W INSTON C HURCHILL , Closing the Ring

There was a consciousness always of the presence of his comrades about him. He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for which they were fighting. It was a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and danger of death.

S TEPHEN C RANE , The Red Badge of Courage

The Eighth Air Force was one of the great fighting forces in the history of warfare. It had the best equipment and the best men, all but a handful of whom were civilian Americans, educated and willing to fight for their country and a cause they understood was in dangerfreedom. Its what made World War II special.

A NDY R OONEY, My War

M aj. John Egans private war began at breakfast in a London hotel. Egan was on a two-day leave from Thorpe Abbotts, an American bomber base some ninety miles north of London and a short stroll from the Norfolk hamlet that gave it its name. Station #139, as it was officially designated, with its 3,500 fliers and support personnel, was built on a noblemans estate lands, and the crews flew to war over furrowed fields worked by Sir Rupert Manns tenant farmers, who lived nearby in crumbling stone cottages heated by open hearths.