Masters of the Air: The Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany - Hardcover

"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, America's 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" ""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" ""Masters of the Air" 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" "Miller's work is always extraordinary but this large volume is especially remarkable for its valuable recovery of details, like all the psychiactric 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" ""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 "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 eye witnesses to this aerial battle field. 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" "For sixty years we have waited for a history to equal the epic saga of the Eighth Air Force's struggle with fighters, flak and weather on a battlefield moving at three miles per minute five miles above the earth's crust. Now it is here. With brilliant artistry, Don Miller paints the story from the pallet 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" "Donald L. Miller's "Masters of the Air" is a stunning achievement. The compound effect of the book's narrative vitality and attention to human detail is terrific in all the meanings of the word - terrifying, extraordinary, highly admirable. What a story it is!"-- David McCullough ""Masters of the Air" is a direct hit."-- Allan R. Millett, Director, Eisenhower Center for American Studies, University of New Orleans

Masters of the Air is a narrative history of the bomber war in World War Two. The U.S. had two air forces conducting strategic bombing in Europe during the war, the Eighth and the Fifteenth. The Eighth was the more powerful and was the one that bombed Germany. Masters of the Air is the story of the Eighth Air Force. Masters of the Air takes readers into battle with the crews, freezing in the air in unheated, unpressurized aircraft. It takes readers to East Anglia, where nearly a quarter of a million Eighth Air Force personnel were stationed, many living among their English hosts. Air men had comforts unknown to the infantry: beds with clean sheets, nights at the local pubs. But they faced far worse odds than any other branch of the armed services. At the centre of the story is a single bomb group, the Hundredth, known as the Bloody Hundredth for its heavy casualties. Masters of the Air follows the Bloody Hundredth from basic training to the end of the war, when the POWs were reunited with their comrades back in England. Masters of the Air deftly mixes the strategic with the personal, giving the reader a riveting account of the bomber war while at the same time telling us unforgettable stories about the young men who flew these planes.