
D-Day Bombers: The Veterans' Story
RAF Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force Support to the Normandy Invasion 1944
- 256 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
D-Day Bombers: The Veterans' Story
RAF Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force Support to the Normandy Invasion 1944
About this book
This book is largely an eye-witness account of the heavy bomber contribution to the success of the D-Day landings and therefore to the winning of the war in Europe. It is told using considerable first-hand experience from the veterans of the campaign, something not really covered in any other books on the subject, together with background information from primary source documents on the tactics and strategy employed. Eight different aircrews, five RAF and three USAAF, tell widely differing stories of operations before, during and after D-Day. Their vivid and dramatic accounts are supplemented by numerous contributions from other aircrew and ground crew veterans, army personnel and French civilians, which have been carefully gathered by Stephen Darlow from interviews with veterans and their relatives, through correspondence and contemporary diaries. Certain raids have been selected and described in detail and there are numerous previously unpublished photographs.As Winston Churchill wrote:
'…This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who still render faithful service in the war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded…'Here is their story, sixty years on.
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Information
Table of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Prologue
- Part One: Flightpath to D-Day
- Chapter 1: RAF Bomber Command’s New Recruit
- Chapter 2: Americans over Berlin
- Chapter 3: Night Battles over Germany
- Chapter 4: The Inescapable Commitment
- Chapter 5: Arming the Resistance
- Chapter 6: The Price of Liberation
- Chapter 7: Spaatz’s Oil Plan
- Chapter 8: Tactical Bombing
- Chapter 9: A Night Battle over France
- Part Two: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy
- Chapter 10: ‘It’s on Boys. D-Day!’
- Chapter 11: ‘This is it!’
- Chapter 12: Intruder
- Chapter 13: Enigma
- Chapter 14: Shot Down
- Chapter 15: Flying Bombs
- Chapter 16: Supporting the Army
- Chapter 17: Blasting Caen
- Chapter 18: The American Breakout
- Chapter 19: Falaise Pocket
- Chapter 20: Conclusions
- Chapter 21: To the End of Hostilities
- Epilogue
- Appendix 1: Chain of Command
- Appendix 2: Commitment to Targets
- Appendix 3: Air Attacks on Civilians
- Appendix 4: Normandy, Front Lines
- Appendix 5: Control of Strategic Heavy Bomber Forces
- Sources and Bibliography
- Footnotes to Chapters
- Index