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Blood and Fears: How America's Bomber Boys of the 8th Air Force Saved World War II by Kevin Wilson
soundertillidie's review
5.0
***Honest Review, Book Acquired from a Goodreads giveaway***
It was great. Right up my ally. WWII and Aviation all in one. It is a match made in heaven.
Blood and Fears is a book about the 8th Air Force. The American Bomber boys did save World War II. This book explained how.
The thing I really loved about this book is that it was not written like a non-fiction book. It was not an overload of stats. It was a great mixture of stats, facts and first hand accounts from the Airman who where there.
The 8th Air Force was a group with many back stories. Many people coming from many different parts of the US. All there for one common goal. Their goal was to defeat Hermann Göring who was the leader of the Luftwaffe. Ultimately their main goal was to make the German forces and people helpless and give them a sense of defeatism. The 8th turned the tied of war.
The 8th used daylight bombing to pound targets while the Royal Air Force did daylight raids. They would nail targets day in and day out. The crews of the B-17's and B-24's would fly log mission in a unpressurized plane. In subfreezing conditions. It was was not glamorous up there. The crews would have to not only fight the Nazi pilots but would have to fight low moral and home sickness. When the war started 25 missions was what a crew member would need to fly to get sent home. Moral hit the fan when that 25 mission number was pushed to 35. The mortality rate was high. Many man would be hit or see their friends hit.
War may have been hard but the mental images of what the men saw is something you can never erase.
If you like history, WWII, and aviation. You will like this book.
It was great. Right up my ally. WWII and Aviation all in one. It is a match made in heaven.
Blood and Fears is a book about the 8th Air Force. The American Bomber boys did save World War II. This book explained how.
The thing I really loved about this book is that it was not written like a non-fiction book. It was not an overload of stats. It was a great mixture of stats, facts and first hand accounts from the Airman who where there.
The 8th Air Force was a group with many back stories. Many people coming from many different parts of the US. All there for one common goal. Their goal was to defeat Hermann Göring who was the leader of the Luftwaffe. Ultimately their main goal was to make the German forces and people helpless and give them a sense of defeatism. The 8th turned the tied of war.
The 8th used daylight bombing to pound targets while the Royal Air Force did daylight raids. They would nail targets day in and day out. The crews of the B-17's and B-24's would fly log mission in a unpressurized plane. In subfreezing conditions. It was was not glamorous up there. The crews would have to not only fight the Nazi pilots but would have to fight low moral and home sickness. When the war started 25 missions was what a crew member would need to fly to get sent home. Moral hit the fan when that 25 mission number was pushed to 35. The mortality rate was high. Many man would be hit or see their friends hit.
War may have been hard but the mental images of what the men saw is something you can never erase.
If you like history, WWII, and aviation. You will like this book.
audreyknutson's review against another edition
2.0
This was an awesome history of first persona accounts of the 8th Air Force in Britain during WWII. It derived content mostly from bomber crews but also included fighter pilots, maintenance men, admin staff, and even red cross workers. I haven’t read a book with this many first person accounts derived from interviews, letters, and diaries. So that was awesome. However, I had to give it 2 stars because it was written so poorly.
The book was written so poorly that it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on/pay attention. It had really awkward sentences riddled in passive voice, ex:
“The concerted and prolonged battle over Germany the US Army Air Force was to win over the next five days had been a long time in coming.”
Some sentences also were soooo long and scattered that I had to re-read them a few times to figure out wtf was going on. Ex:
The few veterans now coming to the end of tours which had begun in late summer remembered with horror the dreadful mauling the Groups had suffered in attempts to neutralize the Liftwaffe in the double-strike missions to Regensburg and Schweinfurt on 17 August, a running battle in the sun across the skies of Germany costing the USAAF sixty of the 370 aircraft it dispatched and which Lt. Col. Beirne Lay Jr, an observer from 8th Bomber Command headquarters, described as ‘a sight that surpassed fiction.’”
While the research was great, the writing and editing itself was horrendous. This book took me so much longer to get through than it should have just because I had to re-read a lot of portions/read them super slow. It’s such a shame.
The book was written so poorly that it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on/pay attention. It had really awkward sentences riddled in passive voice, ex:
“The concerted and prolonged battle over Germany the US Army Air Force was to win over the next five days had been a long time in coming.”
Some sentences also were soooo long and scattered that I had to re-read them a few times to figure out wtf was going on. Ex:
The few veterans now coming to the end of tours which had begun in late summer remembered with horror the dreadful mauling the Groups had suffered in attempts to neutralize the Liftwaffe in the double-strike missions to Regensburg and Schweinfurt on 17 August, a running battle in the sun across the skies of Germany costing the USAAF sixty of the 370 aircraft it dispatched and which Lt. Col. Beirne Lay Jr, an observer from 8th Bomber Command headquarters, described as ‘a sight that surpassed fiction.’”
While the research was great, the writing and editing itself was horrendous. This book took me so much longer to get through than it should have just because I had to re-read a lot of portions/read them super slow. It’s such a shame.
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