Savage Sky: Life and Death on a Bomber over Germany in 1944 (Stackpole Military History Series)

- Gives the reader a firsthand look at war from inside a B-17 bomber in World War II - Focuses on the 92nd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force and includes missions to the Schweinfurt ball-bearing plant and Berlin - One of the first accounts of being shot down over Sweden __The Savage Sky__ is as close as you can get to experiencing aerial combat while still staying firmly planted on the ground. The writing is vivid and intimate, describing the bitter cold at high altitudes, gut-wrenching fear, lethal shrapnel from flak, and German fighters darting through the bomber formation like feeding sharks. The life expectancy of an American B-17 crew in Europe during World War II was eleven missions, yet crews has to fly twenty-five -and eventually thirty-before they could return home. Against these long odds the bomber crews of the U.S. 8th Air Force, based in England, joined the armada of Allied aircraft that pummeled Germany day after day. Radioman George Webster recounts the terrors they confronted: physical and mental exhaustion, bitter cold at high altitudes, lethal shrapnel from flak, and German fighters darting among bombers like feeding sharks. George Wester was a B-17 radio operator in the 92nd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force. On his twenty-fifth mission in May 1944, his bomber was forced to make an emergency landing in Sweden, where he and his crewmates were interned for the war's duration

Gives the reader a firsthand look at war from inside a B-17 bomber in World War II Focuses on the 92nd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force and includes missions to the Schweinfurt ball-bearing plant and Berlin One of the first accounts of being shot down over Sweden

The Savage Sky is as close as you can get to experiencing aerial combat while still staying firmly planted on the ground. The writing is vivid and intimate, describing the bitter cold at high altitudes, gut-wrenching fear, lethal shrapnel from flak, and German fighters darting through the bomber formation like feeding sharks.