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

by Donald L. Miller

Anoxia, or oxygen deprivation, was part of the “aero-medical nightmare” that afflicted the Eighth. Saliva or vomit from airsickness would get into the men’s molded rubber face masks and freeze, blocking the hose and causing men to pass out or even die. Throughout a mission, the navigator would call out oxygen checks every few minutes on the plane’s interphone. If a crewman failed to answer, another was sent to investigate, and, if needed, perform artificial respiration or administer oxygen from a portable walk-around bottle. “It’s altogether too easy to have a leak in your mask or hose, or anywhere else in the line, and to be totally unaware of the problem,” a navigator described a typical mission at 25,000 feet. “Without oxygen at this altitude, you’re unconscious in thirty seconds. After two minutes you’re dead.”