A Wing and a Prayer Quotes

“A B-17 could get its crew back on one engine. Even with half its tail torn off or with a huge, gaping hole in the wings, fuselage, or nose, a good pilot could get his Fort and his crew back to the base.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“The same thing works in history and politics. Progress may come when the Have-not fights against the Have, or the Liberal against the Conservative, or the Progressive against the Reactionary, but more often it comes from the man in the dominant party who sees what is wrong with his own group. Since he is respected in his own party, he can help it improve. Since he is part of the system, and understands it, he knows what needs to be done. Since he has succeeded in the system, his opinion is respected.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“When I think back over those days and my thoughts roam to English girls and women I feel a deep sense of gratitude. They served, in their way. They served, as American women and girls did, in the ways that would make feminists proud. They ferried our planes across the Atlantic. They talked us in through the overcast. If you want to know how gratitude can feel, think of being in a B-17, or any aircraft, with two engines out, with a hole in your starboard wing and two of your crew dying of shell fire. Then think of being lost. You are in white, fleecy clouds, and you can hardly see the tips of your wings. Then think of a woman’s voice, coming in to your headset: “It’s all right, Yah-ink, I’ll get you in.” Then her British voice from Flying Control nestles you down, “Eye-zy, mite, you’re just starboard of the glide path. Heading two-fy-uv-nigh-yun.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“In the history of failed missions of the Eighth Air Force, November 7, 1943, will always remain one of the worst. A real botcheroo.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“I spent very little time at the Officers’ Club because I felt ill at ease with raunch. I could not swap stories with the hot pilots, all of whom imitated the two Buckys. I did not learn to swagger. As gifts I had four different white scarves, but I never wore one once.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“Small wonder that navigators didn’t get promoted. They were just duplicates of what gunners could do.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“For me there was a war on, and I had better concentrate on my part of it.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“My father never expected me to be perfect. “If you win all your games, you are in the wrong league.” His personal goal was eighty-five percent.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“And so we trundle out onto the takeoff point, start Two and Three, get our flare. We go into the blue, get a bunch of aircraft together, get shot at, kill some people, destroy a harbor, and do our part.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“The Germans would head for our navy, but the Brits would go right in under their guns and pull our men out. In London on the next pass, no matter who he was, we would buy the first English sailor we saw a glass of bitters. “Right, mite,” he would”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“No American or East Anglian can think seriously about B-17s today without feeling the tug of their great purpose and destiny: They were the two-fisted tin cans that tore the roof off a deranged empire. When they swarmed over occupied Europe, people blessed them. One day, when several hundred of them roared across Holland, a little girl cried out in fear. Her father put his arm around her, took her hand, and looked up. “Listen to it, Helene,” he told her. “It’s the music of angels.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“Fourteen percent got through. Eighty-six percent loss.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“When I was in the 418th our first sergeant told me he was dating a girl in London. The girl told her mother, who said, “Your Yank makes more in a day than your father makes in a month. You will be able to go places I have never gone. Of course, you should do your part to keep the Americans happy. I would.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“Men at war were different from men at home. Whatever they were stateside, they were more of in England. Whatever was good in them became very good; what was bad became very bad.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“Three thousand men to get two hundred and ten flyers and twenty-one planes into the air.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“On this mission, one crew, piloted by Glenn Dye, flew their twenty-fifth. They were done. They could go home. They were the only original crew of the 100th’s original thirty-five who finished a tour. One out of thirty-five made it through a tour. And even on Dye’s crew, one gunner was killed. None of the original crew all made it. That did not encourage us much.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“Years later, when the heir to the Guinness Brewery fortune purchased Elveden Hall for a summer home, he opened the basement and found seven million dollars’ worth of furniture and art, which he had not known would be included in the palace that he bought for two million.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II

“Jack Kidd, John Bennett, and Tom Jeffrey showed us how to win a war. Bucky Cleven and Bucky Egan gave the 100th its personality. Bob Rosenthal helped us want to win the war.”
― Harry H. Crosby, A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II