Volume 3 of We Were Eagles

covers the turning of the tide, when the air war was redirected to bombing communications targets in northern France in support of the 6 June D-Day invasion and the eventual breakout by Allied forces from the beachheads. Once the Normandy battle was won, missions were resumed against oil targets, factories, communications and other strategic targets. Often crews nursed their blasted and burning Liberators and Flying Fortresses back with flak holes and damage from fighter attacks, including from the new German jet fighters, with feathered props and dead and wounded on board, but those that survived went out again the next day, the day after and the day after that, until their combat tour of thirty and later thirty-five missions was completed.

A host of rank and file air crew members describe these raids in vivid detail and with clarity and vigour. They tell of laughter, friendship, death, fear, exhilaration, stupidity, superstitions, discipline and indiscipline. Also, of course, the sheer horrors faced mission after mission by the ‘boys in the sky’, together with the personal deprivations experienced by the ordinary British men, women and children.