Decision Over Schweinfurt: The U.S. 8th Air Force Battle for Daylight Bombing

New York: David McKay Company, Inc, 1977. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good.. viii, 373, [1] pages. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Sources. Index. No dust jacket. Highlighting/underlining. Slightly cocked. Stamp on fep states "Instructor Copy USAFA Property". Some underlining and marginal marks noted. The story of the US 8th Air Force's battle for daylight bombing, in particular two daring raids on the German ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt. Thomas M. Coffey was a biographer and historian. Mr. Coffey's book ''Hap: The Story of the U.S. Air Force and the Man Who Built It, General Henry 'Hap' Arnold'' (1982) was lauded by the British military historian John Keegan in a review in The Atlantic. General Arnold was chief of the United States Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1946. Mr. Keegan said the book ''offers us a major study of the growth of American air power'' and ''depicts with great frankness an almost Freudian portrait of a supreme achiever.'' Mr. Coffey's book ''Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay'' (1986) was praised by Robert Sherrod, an authority on World War II, in The New York Times Book Review as ''an interesting biography of a major military figure'' who was one of the other great air commanders in World War II. Among the other books written by Mr. Coffey were ''Decision Over Schweinfurt: The U.S. 8th Air Force Battle for Daylight Bombing'' (1977), and ''The Long Thirst: Prohibition in America 1920-1933'' (1975). Mr. Coffey grew up in Madison, Wis., studied at the University of Wisconsin and elsewhere and was a military pilot in the Pacific during World War II. In his early years as a writer he was a critic for the Los Angeles Mirror. The Flying Fortress crews, sweating into their sheep-wool suits despite the 35-below-zero cold, watched the American fighters turn back over Belgium and the German fighters close in to attack. Again the B-17s were invading Germany with only their own guns to protect them. They were enroute to the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt on the biggest raid the U.S. Air Forces had ever attempted. Without ball-bearings, Hitler's war machine would grind to a halt. Decision over Schweinfurt describes moment by moment this August 17, 1943 raid as well as the second Schweinfurt mission, October 14, 1943 —the two most savage battles in the history of air warfare. It also describes day by day the lives and deaths of the men on both sides who faced each other not only in these but in other epic battles. Yet Decision over Schweinfurt 1s more than the story of the two famous Schweinfurt missions; it is also the story of the development of the U.S. 8th Air Force in England, and the most crucial combat tests of the American daylight precision bombing strategy. Citing hundreds of previously unpublished documents, the book reveals for the first time the full struggle to establish this daring American Strategy against the conviction of many authoritative people that it would not work. These people included British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, all his air experts, and many generals and admirals in the U.S. Army and Navy. The British were certain daylight bombing wouldn't work because both they and the Germans had attempted it unsuccessfully. The U.S. airmen had two assets they believed would make it work—the new Norden bombsight, which, under test conditions, "could place a bomb in a barrel from 20,000 feet," and the big Flying Fortress with ten machine guns to make it "‘self-defending."' The British, however, had tried out a few Fortresses against the Germans and declared them inadequate. They wanted the Americans to adopt their own safer strategy of bombing German cities at night. American and British air strategists were arguing this issue when, in February, 1942, Brig. Gen. Ira C. Eaker and his staff arrived in England to create the 8th Bomber Command. When Eaker launched the first great Schweinfurt mission eighteen months later, the matter was still undecided. Could the B-17s battle their way through the waves of Luftwaffe fighters and destroy the Schweinfurt factories? Or would the bombers be turned back, exposing the American Air Forces strategy as a dismal failure? This was the issue that produced the crucial decision over Schweinfurt.