Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

by Donald L. Miller

Most of the boys headed for London, which was a different place than Capt. Robert Morgan and his Memphis Belle crew visited in the winter of 1943. Back then, there were only 47,000 U.S. airmen in England and, with no replacements in sight, leaves had been given sparingly, making Yankee flyboys a rare sight in the war-bloated city. By the end of the year the number of Air Force personnel on the island had ballooned to over 286,000. These airmen comprised only a quarter of the strength of an immense and ever-increasing American troop buildup in preparation for the cross-Channel invasion. In the last three months of 1943, over 413,000 American troops disembarked at English ports, bringing the number of U.S. service personnel in Great Britain to over 773,000. On D-Day there would be a million and a half American soldiers in the U.K., 28 percent of them—nearly 427,000 men and women—members of the AAF.