Masters of the Air
The 8th Air Force flew both the B-24 bomber and P-51 fighter over Europe
I first saw Masters of the Air on a bookshelf in Gettysburg, PA. While it looked interesting, I was already committed to reading a tome on Stonewall Jackson. When the AppleTV series Masters of the Air was released, I had to see what the “buzz” was about.
Masters of the Air tells the remarkable story of how the United States Army Air Forces created a new way of war and a fleet of 3,000+ airplanes to conduct bombing operations over Europe. To provide perspective on the magnitude of the task, the Eighth Air Force stood up in England with only seven men and no airplanes in February 1942. Yet, this is not a book about sheer numbers. It is a wide-ranging book that covers topics such as: airfield construction, aerospace medicine, life as a POW, rest and recreation, relations with local villages, technology development, grand strategy and daily tactics.
Most significantly, Masters of the Air tells the stories of the people who were a part of the Eight Air Force. One of the stories is that of Major James Maitland Stewart. You might know him as the actor Jimmy Stewart. An accomplished commercial pilot before the war, he signed enlistment papers days after winning the Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story. Since nobody wanted to put world-famous Jimmy Stewart in harm’s way, he had to fight to get a combat assignment. He eventually flew twenty combat mission in a B-24 bomber without losing a single man to enemy fire or mental breakdown. In the process, Major Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Finally, Masters of the Air is a case study on how the framing assumptions of Army Air Force’s bomber doctrine were well off-target. Assumptions like: “the bomber will always get through”, “you can’t build an escort fighter”, “you can fly above ground fire”, “the Norden bombsight will ensure the target is hit”, “bombing aircraft production facilities will defeat an enemy air force” were all tragically proven wrong. More airmen died flying over Europe than marines died in the Pacific. In actuality, the bomber war was a brutal war of attrition between German and American air forces.
I highly recommend this book for readers who want to go deeper into World War II and aviation history.
Maj Jimmy Stewart and his crew