The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45
Long before he entered politics, when he was just in his early 20s,  South Dakotan George McGovern flew 35 bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe,  earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. Stephen Ambrose,  the industrious historian, focuses on McGovern and the young crew of his B-24  bomber, volunteers all, in this vivid study of the air war in Europe.Manufactured by a consortium of companies that included Ford Motor and Douglas  Aircraft, the B-24 bomber, dubbed the Liberator, was designed to drop high  explosives on enemy positions well behind the front lines--and especially on the  German capital, Berlin. Unheated, drafty, and only lightly armored, the planes  were dangerous places to be, and indeed, only 50 percent of their crews survived  to the war's end. Dangerous or not, they did their job, delivering thousand- pound bombs to targets deep within Germany and Austria.In his fast-paced narrative, Ambrose follows many other flyers (including the  Tuskegee Airmen, the African American pilots who gave the B-24s essential  fighter support on some of their most dangerous missions) as they brave the long  odds against them, facing moments of glory and terror alike. "It would be an  exaggeration to say that the B-24 won the war for the Allies," Ambrose writes.  "But don't ask how they could have won the war without it."--Gregory  McNamee