The Fall of Fortresses

Ref: 2751

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{detailed description}A personal account of one of the most daring — and deadly — air battles of the Second World War, by Elmer Bendiner.
On an August morning in 1943, a group of American airmen were told that before the day was out they would deliver the blow that would win the war. Flying the famous B-17 Flying Fortresses, they were ordered to embark on a raid that would obliterate the installations on which all German industry depended. Their targets were the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt.
Elmer Bendiner took part in the Schweinfurt Raids, and he draws on his own experience to write a book that will surely stand as a major contribution to the literature on the Second World War. He recreates the terrifying seductive power felt by all who took part in the raids, balanced by the hell of the bombing and the terrible trail of destruction left by Flying Fortresses as they plunged earthwards in flames.
Who really won? Who lost? In his search for the answers, the author has examined the archives of both the German and the U.S. Air Forces, and he has interviewed those in command who are still living. He traces the course of the discussions about Schweinfurt from the first casual mention at a Washington cocktail party to the bombings themselves, and he reveals the bitter inter-service rivalries and the underlying motives that led to the airborne bloodbath in the German skies.
The Fall of Fortresses would be well worth reading as a personal account alone, but it is much more: it is a highly original and deeply felt study of men at war and the myths and realities of air power, as relevant to us today as it was in the dawn skies of Europe thirty years ago.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Elmer Bendiner
published by Souvenir Press 1981 1st edn. 258pp illustrated. 15x22
{condition}near fine, inc. d/j.
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