In its first ten months of operations, the Eighth lost 188 heavy bombers and approximately 1,900 crewmen, not counting those dead and wounded who returned to England in their battered ships. Approximately 73 percent of the combat fliers who had arrived in England in the summer and fall of 1942 failed to complete their tour of duty. Fifty-seven percent were killed or missing in action, and another 16 percent had either been seriously wounded, killed in crashes in England, or permanently grounded by a serious physical or mental disability.
