Bill Yenne - Hit the Target: Eight Men who Led The Eighth Air Force to Victory over the Luftwaffe

T he Eighth Air Force is not the subject of this book but the stage upon which the climactic act of eight stories takes place. It was the wartime home of these eight individuals, whose lives intersected beneath its roof.

These are eight parallel lives chosen from among those of around 350,000 men who were part of this unique organization during a crossroads of world history. These eight came from widely varied backgrounds, in a dozen states, from North Carolina to Alaska (then a territory).

Tooey Spaatz, Ira Eaker, and Jimmy Doolittle each served as commander of the Eighth Air Force during World War II, but their careers were much more than their time with the Eighth. Their aviation careers were closely intertwined with one another and with the early evolution of American aviation and American airpower.

Curtis LeMay and Hub Zemke were also accomplished prewar military pilots, and they became important leaders in the middle tier of command at the Eighth. With LeMay commanding bomber units and Zemke commanding fighters, both led large numbers of men, but both also flew combat missions themselves.

Maynard Snuffy Smith, an anomaly among the eight, was the only enlisted man. He was the first living airman in the European Theater to receive the Medal of Honor, but his medal was a shining island in a lifetime of mischief and failure. Recalling Smiths life is like looking at a train wreck. Though it is unsettling to watch, we cannot avert our eyes. Yet he is an icon of the Eighth who is not forgotten, and who symbolizes how service with the Eighth brought out the very best in even the most unlikely people.

Bob Morgan piloted the Memphis Belle, probably the best remembered of the tens of thousands of B-17 Flying Fortresses that were operated by the Eighthand he later served under LeMay in the Pacific. Just as Doolittle led the first American raid on Tokyo in 1942, Morgan led the next mission to Tokyo in 1944.

Rosie Rosenthal flew Flying Fortresses with the 100th Bomb Group, known as the Bloody Hundredth for the terribly heavy losses that it suffered in combat. On his third mission with the Bloody Hundredth, Rosenthal was the only member of the group on that mission who came back. He interrupted his career as an attorney to fly with the Eighth, and then returned to Germany after the war as part of the prosecution team at Nuremberg.

Though the Eighth Air Force was only one of 16 numbered air forces within the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II, it was the largest, and today it is probably the most famous. At the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, Georgia, we are reminded that the Eighth suffered half the casualties of the entire USAAF during World War II.