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The U.S. Eighth Air Force launched its bombing marketing campaign in opposition to Nazi Germany, one of many largest, most vital and most devastating strategic initiatives in the annals of warfare, on this day in historical past, Jan. 27, 1943.
“I knew what it meant to look my own fear in the face and do my duty because the lives of my crew and the destiny of my country depended on it,” Eighth Air Force B-17 bomber pilot and future Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry wrote in his eponymous 1990 autobiography.
“War tested me. But I had survived. And the experience had given me not only a broader perspective on life, but a confidence in myself I had never known before.”
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A complete of 55 bombers dropped 137 tons of bombs on warehouses, industrial crops and U-boat docks on the port of Wilhemshaven on the North Sea on Jan. 27.
It was the primary American air assault on the German homeland in World War II.
A B-17 crew from the United States Army Air Force’s Eighth Air Force, 385th Bomb Group, plot a goal on a map previous to a mission, England, circa 1943. At heart is First Lieutenant Louis A. Dentoni Jr. (died 1944). Second from left is Lieutenant Colonel Vincent W. Masters. (PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
The Eighth Air Force flew an unimaginable 440,000 bomber sorties over Germany by the top of the struggle in Europe in May 1945, dropping 697,000 tons of explosives.
“I remember thinking how good, how all-American the young fliers looked in their leather jackets, open-shirt collars, and jaunty leather-peaked caps set on their heads in casually rakish angles,” World War II correspondent Andy Rooney — later a “60 Minutes” commentator — romanticized of the heroes in his 1995 autobiography, “My War.”
“I knew what it meant to look my own fear in the face and do my duty.” — Bomber pilot Tom Landry
Rooney and fellow legendary American newsman Walter Cronkite have been among the many younger struggle reporters who reduce their enamel skirting demise on bombing missions over Germany in 1943.
They helped chronicle the horrific losses.
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The Eighth Air Force suffered practically half of all U.S. Army Air Force casualties of World War II (47,483 out of 115,332). More than 26,000 of those males have been killed in motion, in response to Air Force experiences.
Photo of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress utilized by the United States Air Force throughout World War II (dated twentieth century). (Universal History Archive/ Universal Images Group by way of Getty Images)
The U.S. Eighth Air Force was a part of the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
The Air Force grew to become a separate department of the miliary in 1947, two years after the struggle.
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“The United States Eighth Air Force deployed to England with a daunting mission: destroy Germany’s ability to wage war, and gain command of the European skies to pave the way for an Allied land invasion,” writes the National World War II Museum.
“In order to accomplish it, thousands of American airmen had to face the constant threat of death daily.”
Sgt. Paul McErlane of Lowell, Massachusetts, died over Europe serving on a bomber crew in World War II. He is remembered at present on the Netherlands American Cemetery in a memorial to these lacking in motion. He’s one in every of hundreds Americans whose stays have been by no means recovered honored in MIA memorials at ABMC cemeteries in Europe. (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
The effort was meant to devastate Germany’s war-making infrastructure. More than 100 of Germany’s largest cities lay in smoldering ruins by the top of the struggle.
“The Eighth planned and precisely executed America’s daylight strategic bombing campaign against Nazi-occupied Europe, and in doing so the organization compiled an impressive war record,” writes the Eighth Air Force in its official on-line historical past.
“The Eighth’s brave men earned 17 Medals of Honor, 220 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 442,000 Air Medals. The Eighth’s combat record also shows 566 aces (261 fighter pilots with 31 having 15 or more victories and 305 enlisted gunners).”
The bombing campaign came at a tragic human cost.
“The long, slow death spiral of a bomber with its crew on board is a terrible thing to see.” — Andy Rooney, “My War”
German civilians suffered through what became known as “total war” in World War II — three years after Hitler launched a bombing campaign against Great Britain.
As many as 800,000 German civilians were killed during British and American bombing raids in World War II.
The crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress Knock-out Dropper bomber walk away from their plane. At center, wearing a flak jacket, is pilot John P. Manning. To the left of Manning, wearing a brimmed cap, is copilot George T. Mackin. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
Germany at the same time rained down death daily on Britain and recently liberated Belgium, France and Netherlands through its V2 rocket program. Thousands of rockets struck Allied civilian targets as technology erased traditional battlefield lines.
The men who survived bombing missions over Europe suffered incredible mental strain, as they were forced to face the likelihood of death so often.
American bombardier Joseph Heller channeled his mental anguish in the brilliant, hallucinatory, tragic-comic 1961 antiwar novel “Catch-22.”
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It tells the story of bombardier Captain Yossarian, attempting to keep away from flying extra missions in any respect prices, whereas entrapped by the navy logic of Catch-22.
American bombardier Joseph Heller channeled his psychological anguish in the tragic-comic 1961 antiwar novel “Catch-22.”
It dictated that any crewman afraid of dying on a mission was of sound thoughts and subsequently needed to fly; anybody prepared to fly extra missions was insane and by no means mentioned something. Either means, sane or insane, crewmen have been flying in the face of demise.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” Yossarian tells a navy physician in one of many turning factors of the novel.
“Catch-22” proved so in style that the phrase entered the English language as a synonym for a no-win state of affairs.
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The bombing expertise made Heller a “tortured, funny, deeply peculiar human being,” the New York Times wrote in 2011.
Rooney, finest recognized in a while for his work on “60 Minutes,” skilled the extreme concern of flying bombing missions when he attacked Germany with the Eighth Air Force on Feb. 26, 1943.
“Several B-17s around us were hit. Three in formation went down,” he wrote in “My War,” noting that German planes would fly above the Allied bombers and drop parachute explosives between them to maximise casualties.
Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry is proven at heart throughout a sport. (Getty Images)
“The long, slow death spiral of a bomber with its crew on board is a terrible thing to see. It was worse for the crew because they knew all 30 men on board.”
Rooney’s aircraft was hit by German fireplace however survived the journey again to England.
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The reporter, simply 24 years outdated on the time, added, “February 26 was the first time I’d seriously considered my own death.”
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