020472 - TALES TO NOSES OVER BERLIN: The 8th Air Force Missions

By Ray Bowden

• 20 USAAF daylight raids covered.
• Listing of losses for 450 heavy bombers.
• Archives material from US and German sources reveal the results, often previously officially described simply as "unobserved".
• Veterans and survivors tell their stories.
• Summary of the RAF campaign against Berlin.
• The targets, the defences and the political/military reasons for the attacks.

128 pages, 100+ photographs, soft cover

"BIG B" - Berlin - the very name sent shudders through every Allied airman. The USAAF's 8th Air Force began a 20 mission campaign against the German capital in March 1944, just as the RAF gave up its ambitions to crack the city wide open. They battled against the cream of the Luftwaffe in the air, the flak from the ground and the North European weather. It started with just thirty bombers over Berlin and climaxed with twelve hundred and thirty a year later.

Berlin was considered rich in targets but there were political considerations too. The British, the Russians, not just the Germans, all influenced the progress of the campaign. Each of the twenty missions is covered - the bomber war, the fighter war. For some they would prove every bit the nightmare envisaged; for others an anti-climax, a milk run. The crews of more than 450 B17s and B24s failed to return. Of those that did return, none would ever forget they had been.

Veterans and survivors tell their stories, through recollection, diary notes, reports and official records. Target damage analysis from USAAF files and detailed study of official secret German archive records reveal the results of the raids. The destruction is revealed and the human cost - to friend and foe alike.