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
In 1942, many Americans considered anyone of Japanese ancestry to be an enemy, regardless of where they had been born or how long their families had lived in the United States. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Jimmy Stewart is arguably the only prewar American actor of superstar magnitude to have served in a sustained combat role during World War II, and the only one to have served in a position of command. Read more
Eighth Air Force
On a bright spring day in 1944, a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190 fighter encountered a formation of U.S. Read more
Eighth Air Force
The swinging beams of searchlights and the wail of air raid sirens had preceded the crash of the guns. 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
Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel attack that hit the Nazi-occupied beaches of Normandy in 1944, was the culmination of a grand strategy adopted early in the war, followed sporadically during the years of conflict, and aimed at defeating Hitler’s Reich by striking directly at Germany by invasion. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Even though, technically at least, it was not a combat airplane, the performance of the Douglas C-47 transport led General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower to label it as one of the most important weapons of World War II. Read more
Eighth Air Force
It was a method of warfare that would have been anathema to Americans only a few short years before. Read more
Eighth Air Force
The first good news in the war for the United States had been the Doolittle Raid on April 18. Read more
Eighth Air Force
During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. Read more
Eighth Air Force
At daybreak on December 16, 1944, three senior officers in the Army Air Corps and a Royal Air Force air vice marshal arrived at an elegant chateau near the town of Spa in southeastern Belgium that was the headquarters of Lt. 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
Operation Frantic was a seven-shuttle bombing series conducted by American bomb squadrons operating out of Southern Italy and Great Britain. Read more
Eighth Air Force
When the call came that morning, it was not unlike the 25 times previously when they had flown, or all those other times when weather intervened and postponement was ordered. Read more
Eighth Air Force
Racing his Bentley at breakneck speed between his High Wycombe headquarters and the Air Ministry during World War II, Air Marshal Arthur Travers Harris was the bane of motorcycle policemen on the London road. 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
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
