Osprey Combat Aircraft 15 : B-24 Liberator Units of the Eighth Air Force

When it was all over, and there was no going back to change any part of what had happened, Americans who fought over the continent in the Liberator wondered how in God's name they had endured the sub-zero cold, flak, fighters and the fickle cruelties of modern industrial warfare which gave the average crewman, according to one official estimate, only a 70-30 chance of coming out alive. The B-24 Liberator was built in greater numbers than any other US warplane, yet its combat crews live, even today, in the shadow of the less plentiful, but better-known, B-17. Accounts of the 'Mighty Eighth' in Europe, and indeed many of the books and films that emerged from the greatest air campaign in history, often overlook the B-24, even though it was in action for as long as the Flying Fortress, and participated in just as many perilous daylight bombing missions. Twenty-one bomb groups saw action with the Eighth from 9 October 1942 through to VE-Day, operating both from airfields in the 'bomber triangle' in East Anglia, and North Africa. Providing an overview of Eighth AF B-24 operations, this book is the second of four within this series chronicling the role of the Liberator in World War 2. Text by Robert F. Dorr with illustrations by Mark Rolfe.

Contents

• 1942
• 1943
• 1944
• 1945
• Appendices