The Eighth Air Force was the primary component of the U.S. Army Air Forces based in England during World War II. It carried out bomber operations against Nazi-occupied Europe and the German homeland, bombing by day while the British Royal Air Force carried out night raids. Eighth Air Force fighter aircraft also engaged the German Luftwaffe in intense dogfights for mastery of the skies above Western Europe.
Eighth Air Force
He was widely regarded as America’s best pilot, he was already a recipient of the Medal of Honor, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force caught up in 1,000-plane bombing missions deep into the Third Reich, and he was mad as hell. Read more
Eighth Air Force
The Nelson King, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, was en route to Berlin on March 6, 1944, when it flew into a whirlwind of Luftwaffe fighters. Read more
Eighth Air Force
The Eighth Air Force—the “Mighty Eighth”—became the stuff of U.S. Air Force legend when its fleets of unprotected Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bombers flew massive air raids against the heavily guarded German industrial heartland during the period between the end of January through the middle of October 1943. Read more
Eighth Air Force
The Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter plane dove out of the sky with machine guns firing. The pilot’s target—a pontoon bridge being stretched across Germany’s Werra River by American engineers. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Walter Cronkite is the acknowledged dean of American journalists, an icon whose distinguished career spanned 60 years. Cronkite is best known as the anchorman and managing editor of The CBS Evening News, a position he occupied from 1962 to 1981. Read more
Eighth Air Force
The U.S. 29th Infantry Division was formed in July 1917, three months after America entered World War I. Read more
Eighth Air Force
If a single airplane has captured the public imagination more than any other, it is undoubtedly the North American P-51 Mustang fighter. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Due largely to their use in the postwar U.S. Army Air Forces and present proliferation among the air show community, the North American P-51 Mustang is thought of by many as the most important American fighter of World War II. Read more
Eighth Air Force
On August 25, 1944, Larry Stevens and the rest of his Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew completed their 35th mission over Nazi-occupied Europe. Read more
Eighth Air Force
If there is an American combat airplane that has achieved an ill-deserved reputation, no doubt it would be the much-maligned Bell P-39 Airacobra, a tricycle landing gear single-engine fighter whose reputation was greatly overshadowed by the more famous, and of more recent design, Lockheed P-38 Lightning, Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and North American P-51 Mustang. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Even as they were being integrated into the European Allied air campaign, the use and operation of American B-26 Marauders, and other medium bombers, was still being worked out—with sometimes, as at IJmuiden, Holland, disastrous results. Read more
Eighth Air Force
“We went to London in ones and twos during our precious 24-hour passes to transfer and pick up our U.S. Read more
Eighth Air Force
During the 1920s, roughly two decades before the B-25 Mitchell bomber came into service, U.S. Army Air Service commander Brig. Read more
Eighth Air Force
If there was a name of a prospective target that caused Allied airmen in the European Theater of Operations to blanch in the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1944, it was Ploesti. Read more
Eighth Air Force
In the lush, green rural community of Duxford, a 20-minute bus ride from the university town of Cambridge, the American Air Museum in Britain houses the finest collection of historic American combat aircraft outside the United States. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Since the end of World War II, the aviation press has made the North American P-51 Mustang into the superstar Allied fighter of the war. Read more
Eighth Air Force
In the annals of World War II, one of the most famous airplanes is the British-developed Supermarine Spitfire, an agile, elliptical-wing fighter that has become synonymous with the Royal Air Force victory in the Battle of Britain. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Major General Charles “Chuck” Yeager, United States Air force (Ret.), was one of a handful of people who could rightly claim the title “living legend.” Read more
Eighth Air Force
The popular conception of the struggle in the air over northern Europe during World War II is of squadrons of sleek fighters racing over the German heartland to protect contrailed streams of lumbering bombers stretching beyond sight. Read more
Eighth Air Force
In early 1942, the U.S. Eighth Air Force arrived in England firmly entrenched in the belief that continuous and accurate daylight precision bombing was the only way to decisively crush German industrial capacity. Read more
