The 390th Bomb Group Anthology includes 83 stories written by 45 members of the 390th Bomb Group relating their personal adventures during the World War II years. of 1943, 1944, and 1945. The stories include combat briefs, mission stories, humor in the midst of war, evasion, and imprisonment after being shot down. Some of the stories were written as they happened during the war years while others are recollections of those events so prominent in the mins of those who lived them. The reader will be provided new insight into the war in the air by these personal accounts. The 390th Bomb Group was one of the most famous units in the Eighth Air Force. This unit flew 301 missions against Hitler's "Fortress Europe." This effort had a profound affect on the outcome of World War II in Europe.
This bibliography lists published and printed unit histories for the United States Air Force and Its Antecedents, including Air Divisions, Wings, Groups, Squadrons, Aviation Engineers, and the Women's Army Corps.
"Conversino's story is as interesting as it is unfamiliar and succeeds in opening up "Frantic's" many dimensions, including the personal as well as the political, strategic, and operational. His revelations regarding the interactions between American servicemen and Ukrainian Russians are especially valuable and underscore the immense difficulties of implementing alliances at the grass roots level". -- Dennis Showalter, author of Tannenberg: Clash of Empires
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 put tens of thousands of American civilians, especially Jews, in deadly peril, and yet the US State Department failed to help them. Consequently many suffered and some died. Later, when the United States joined the war against Hitler, many American and, in particular, Jewish American soldiers were captured and
During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were high. Of the roughly 125,000 who served as aircrew with Bomber Command, 59,423 were killed or missing and presumed killed—a fatality rate of 45.5%. With odds like that, it would be no surprise if there were as few atheists in cockpits as there were in foxholes; and indeed, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in Flying against Fate, a pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II. Mining a wealth of documents as well as a trove of published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, MacKenzie examines the myriad forms combat fliers' superstitions assumed, from jinxes to premonitions. Most commonly, airmen carried amulets or talismans—lucky boots or a stuffed toy; a coin whose year numbers added up to thirteen; counterintuitively, a boomerang. Some performed rituals or avoided other acts, e.g., having a photo taken before a flight. Whatever seemed to work was worth sticking with, and a heightened risk often meant an upsurge in superstitious thought and behavior. MacKenzie delves into behavior analysis studies to help explain the psychology behind much of the behavior he documents—not slighting the large cohort of crew members and commanders who demurred. He also looks into the ways in which superstitious behavior was tolerated or even encouraged by those in command who saw it as a means of buttressing morale. The first in-depth exploration of just how varied and deeply felt superstitious beliefs were to tens of thousands of combat fliers, Flying against Fate expands our understanding of a major aspect of the psychology of war in the air and of World War II.
