By Kevin Seabrooke
Flying classified missions under the cover of darkness to support underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe is not the kind of volunteer work that garners much contemporary press. It’s not uncommon for those who volunteer for secret missions to remain out of the public consciousness and popular history for decades. For 50 years their exploits were classified. Not until 2018, 75 years after they started, were the “Carpetbaggers” of the 801st/492nd Bombardment Group of Eighth Air Force publicly recognized with the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal.
Five years before the CIA, there was the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), who in 1943 began recruiting American bomber pilot volunteers to make low-level night drops of supplies and weapons to French resistance fighters. These Carpetbaggers were recruited from two squadrons that flew B-24 Liberators on sub-hunting missions. The OSS command reasoned that this kind of pilot was perfect for the mission they had in mind. Rather than flying in large formations to drop bombs, these men flew “solitary planes on long patrols with crews that did their own navigation and then dropped to very low altitudes to attack their targets.”
A #1 New York Times bestselling author, Bruce Henderson has synthesized voluminous declassified records and interviews into a tale that reads like an adventure novel.
Midnight Flyboys: The American Bomber Crews and Allied Secret Agents Who Aided the French Resistance in World War II (Bruce Henderson, Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster), 336 pp. Nov. 11, 2025 $30 HC)
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