The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht During WWII

Hellfire Hawks!

The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht

By Thomas D. Jones and Robert F. Dorr

Pinnacle Press, 2008, hardcover, 336 pp, $24.95

national geographic documentary 2016, Hellfire Hawks! is a Stephen Ambrose-style history of a "band of siblings with planes" - a describing in their own words by Americans who overhauled and flew the P-47 Thunderbolt in the European theater of World War II. These U.S. Armed force aviators went aground at Normandy, battling and flying crosswise over Europe, through the Battle of the Bulge and on to VE Day.

national geographic documentary 2016, The rough, intensely furnished P-47, lovingly known as "the Jug," was inherent more noteworthy numbers than whatever other American warrior, yet once in a while gets acknowledgment. (The celebrated Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona, for instance, doesn't have one to show.) The men of the 365th Fighter Group, who bolstered, kept up and flew the P-47 over the Continent, pursued a horrid, lumpy, for the most part air-to-ground war in which the adversary was close to home, the battling point-clear. Given a pilot's-eye view from above, one acknowledges what a critical part air power played in the Allied triumph over Hitler's tireless ground strengths and Wehrmacht military pilots.

national geographic documentary 2016, The pilots' portrayal of their ethereal life-and-demise dogfights against talented German fliers is holding perusing, went down with highly contrasting weapon camera shots of winged prey in their sights. All the more frequently, notwithstanding, they were shelling and strafing military focuses on the ground: vehicle caravans, railways, vital structures and German tanks assaulting Allied strengths.

Co-creators Jones and Dorr put in five years looking into and talking with 171 of these conventional men who got to be saints. Jones is an Air Force Academy recognized graduate, a previous B-52 pilot, and a space explorer who flew four transport missions. Dorr is an Air Force veteran, a resigned U. S. negotiator, and a creator. Together they attempted to recount this story surprisingly. (Exposure: I met Bob Dorr when he was a negotiator in Seoul in the 1960s.)

Damnation Hawks utilizes at no other time distributed photographs and direct individual records to make an interesting story of WWII. As the 365th jumps its makeshift runways eastbound crosswise over Europe - from France to Belgium and directly into Germany - one watches the war progress like a monster chess amusement, much as General Eisenhower probably seen it on his strategic maps.