In 1943 Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, called for ‘totalen Krieg’—total war—war without mercy, war without restraints—and in the skies over Europe he got what he wanted. The bombers of the RAF’s Bomber Command and the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force set out to...
… the B-24s flew into very heavy flak at very low altitudes as a parade of slow-moving targets …A B-24 flies over burning facilities in Ploiești.On August 1st, 1943, B-24 Liberators from the 8th and 9th US Army Air Forces attacked the oil refineries at Ploiești,...
“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven... And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” King...
Early this month I sent the draft of my next book to the publisher. Since then I have been wandering the streets in search of gainful occupation … The book is titled ‘Trial and Tribulation’—a Churchill quote, of course—and is set in 1943. That was the year in which...
P38 Lightning, P47 Thunderbolt, P51 MustangIn my last two blogs I discussed the B17 Flying Fortress and the B24 Liberator, the two USAAF heavy bombers that carried much of the load in the Allied European daylight bombing campaigns, and the extraordinary courage and...
The Consolidated B24 Liberator suffers from the same ‘second class billing’ as the Hawker Hurricane. Just as the RAF’s Hurricane fighter is seen as somehow less important in the Battle of Britain in comparison to the iconic Spitfire, the Liberator is seen as ‘second...
