Donald L. Miller > Quotes

“A human being has to look out for other human beings or else there’s no civilization.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Through a policy of trial and error the Eighth Air Force eventually found the right targets, but it ignored one of extreme importance: Germany’s electric power network.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Too many people here and in England hold to the view that the German people as a whole are not responsible for what has taken place—that only a few Nazi leaders are responsible. That unfortunately is not based on fact. The German people as a whole must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“The fact is that the Eighth Air Force did not have sufficient bombers in its first year of operations to seriously hurt Germany, no matter where it struck.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“the Nobel Prize–winning novelist Thomas Mann had sent a dark warning to his countrymen, “Did Germany believe that she would never have to pay for the atrocities that her leap into barbarism seemed to allow?”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“The Kingdom of Heaven runs on righteousness, but the Kingdom of Earth runs on oil. ERNEST BEVIN, CHURCHILL’S MINISTER OF LABOUR AND NATIONAL SERVICE London,”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“In 1944, the German air defense system called on the services of 4.5 million workers and consumed a third of the nation’s total war resources.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Chicago was “the only great city in the world to which all its citizens have come for the one common, avowed object of making money,”
― Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America

“Often the flak was so thick the men could smell it through their oxygen masks; and the concentrated barrages exploded with such force that the concussions would have driven the pilots through the roofs of their planes had they not been strapped in. On some planes, men sat on sheets of lead to protect their genitals. Helpless in the flak field, all they could do was sit and take it. This was when pilots and crewmen alike learned that it was possible to sweat at 40 degrees below zero. Bombardier Theodore Hallock was not a praying man, but when he was in a tight spot over the target he would whisper to himself, “God, you gotta. You gotta get me back. God, listen, you gotta.” Many of the men promised the Almighty that if they got through they’d swear off liquor and women. Hallock said he never promised that “because I figured that if God was really God he’d be bound to understand how men feel about liquor and women.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“and pressure of the pilots’ limp bodies. After a descent of nearly 15,000 feet, with enemy fighters pounding them even as they picked up speed, he pulled the plane out of its dive so suddenly, said wounded radio operator Thomas Sowell, “I felt my eyeballs were going to pop out through my cheek bones.” At this point, navigator Walter Truemper, a former accounting clerk from Aurora, Illinois, made his way up to the cockpit and Moore handed over control of the ship to him. A few minutes later, Scottish-born Archie”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“alongside Ten Horsepower and talk it to the ground by radioing instructions to Mathies. With Mathies flying wildly, alternately climbing and diving, they were unable to get close enough to provide much assistance. After Mathies made a second unsuccessful pass, Romig told Mathies and Truemper to point the bomber out to sea, set the automatic pilot, and bail out. The two men replied that the pilot was still alive and could not be moved. They would not desert him. After failing to land at a neighboring field, Ten Horsepower veered out”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“In the Air Force, it was the skill and courage of small combat teams that made the difference in battle.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“John Steinbeck wrote in 1942, “Of all branches of the Service, the Air Force must act with the least precedent, the least tradition.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“storm of German fighters that had scored a direct hit on tail gunner George Buske. Vosler sat on the edge of the table in his radio compartment and blazed away with his flexible machine gun through the open hatch overhead until an exploding shell ripped his gun apart as he bent over it. Reaching up to where his eyes should have been, he felt a moist mass of loose flesh. Vosler saw blood streaming down the retina inside his eye. Thinking it was on the outside, he was certain he had lost a good part of his face. “I knew I was going to die,”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“My Story of the War,”
― Donald L. Miller, Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy

“merchant”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“There were Harvard history majors and West Virginia coal miners, Wall Street lawyers and Oklahoma cow punchers, Hollywood idols and football heroes. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. Both served beside men and boys who had washed office windows in Manhattan or loaded coal cars in Pennsylvania—Poles and Italians, Swedes and Germans, Greeks and Lithuanians, Native Americans and Spanish-Americans, but not African-Americans, for official Air Force policy prevented blacks from flying in combat units of the Eighth Air Force.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“of control and crash-landed. Mathies and Truemper were killed instantly and were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The wounded pilot they died trying to save survived for only another hour or so. Carl Moore, the last man to see his three dead crewmates, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, the Pittsburgh Coal Company renamed one of its mines for Archie Mathies, the air gunner from Stonehouse, Scotland, who had worked beside his father in a bituminous seam in Liberty, Pennsylvania, before”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“In an equally fought battle of attrition both sides sometimes believe they are losing. With Overlord planned for the spring of 1944, Allied leaders became increasingly worried that their air forces would not have sufficient time and strength to achieve, not just air superiority, but the air supremacy Eisenhower deemed essential for the success of the largest amphibious invasion in history. For this reason alone the bomber offensive could not have been officially suspended after Black Thursday; the entire invasion depended upon its success. In the grim calculus of total war, it was considered far better to lose a few hundred unprotected bombers than to have entire divisions slaughtered on the beaches of northern France.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Mathies, a Pennsylvania coal miner’s son who had a few hours’ flying experience, climbed out of his ball turret and joined Truemper in the cock-pit. The two men crouched in the narrow opening between the seats as they tried to decide what to do. Using their hands to manipulate the elevator and aileron controls, which were on the floor of the cockpit, they managed to keep the bomber airborne. Other crewmen pulled Bartley’s body out of the right seat and placed it in the crawlway below the cockpit. Truemper then handed the controls”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“On a return trip from Bremen on December 13, 1943, radio operator Forrest “Woody” Vosler, a former drill press operator from Livonia, New York, was hit where no man was protected. His plane, Jersey Bounce Jr. of the 303rd Bomb Group, “Hell’s Angels,” had two engines shot out and was still being assailed by a”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Epilogue The Eighth Air Force began its great movement back to the United States on May 19, 1945. The bomber boys flew their own planes; the ground echelons and fighter pilots”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Only relationships with people who might be dead tomorrow were important. It is a sort of wonderful state of mind. It’s too bad it takes a war to create such a condition among men.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“started to slide down the wing into the water.” Perched on top of the fuselage, with both eyes filled with blood, Vosler was still able to distinguish blurred shapes. “I knew Buske would be in the water in a fraction of a second. I would have to take action. So I jumped and held out my hand at the same time. I grabbed the antenna wire that runs from the top of the tail to just forward of the starboard radio compartment window. I prayed that it would hold, and I was able to grab Buske around his waist just as he was”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“decapitating co-pilot Ronald Bartley and knocking out pilot C. Richard Nelson. The limp bodies of both pilots slumped forward on the steering columns and, in an eerie parallel, Ten Horsepower went into the same kind of dive that nearly finished off William Lawley’s Fortress. The centrifugal force created by the spiraling dive immobilized every surviving crewman. “For the next few minutes it was like being inside of a spinning top. We were thrown against the fuselage and held there. We couldn’t move,” said waist gunner Russell”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“been disabled, but working by touch, with blood dripping from his face, he managed to repair it and instruct the other gunners where to set the dials for the emergency channel. Then he tapped out a distress signal informing Air/Sea Rescue that Jersey Bounce Jr. was about to fall into the North Sea. After that he passed out. When he regained consciousness, he made a decision. With the plane dropping fast and nothing else left to toss out, he asked the other gunners to lower him through an escape hatch without a parachute. Convinced he”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“he said later. “The fear was intense; it’s indescribable, the terror you feel when you realize you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it. So I started to lose control and . . . go completely berserk.” Yet as quickly as he had lost his senses, he became serenely calm. Reaching out his hand, he muttered, “Take me, God, I’m ready.” Near the North Sea, the German fighters melted away. With gas running low, the Fortress’s pilot ordered the men to throw everything expendable overboard. Vosler’s radio had”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“going into the water . . . If the wire had broken, both of us would have gone into the drink.” Minutes later, the crew of a Norwegian trawler pulled the fliers from the sea. That night, Woody Vosler suffered terribly at Great Yarmouth hospital, but as Andy Rooney wrote sometime later, “The doctors think that Forrest Vosler may be able to see enough out of one eye, the right eye, to distinguish the Congressional Medal of Honor” he was to receive for his day’s work in Jersey Bounce Jr.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“With the Allies on the advance nearly everywhere and invasion talk in the air, London was a welcoming place for young airmen who were taking the fight to Hitler’s doorstep. The first stop for American airmen was usually the nearest Red Cross Club, where helpful volunteers made bookings free of charge at commercial hotels or at one of the Red Cross’s own dormitory-like facilities. After checking in and dropping off their kits, most men headed straight for Rainbow Corner. Located on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus, it was a place as close to home as a GI could find in all of England. Administered by the American Red Cross, Rainbow Corner had been designed “to create a strictly American atmosphere.” There was an exact replica of a small-town corner drugstore in the club’s basement, where ice-cold Cokes were sold for a nickel and grilled hamburgers for a dime. Upstairs, in the grand ballroom, servicemen danced with volunteer hostesses to the driving music of soldier bands—the Flying Forts, the Thunderbolts, the Sky Blazers. There was also a lounge with a jukebox and a small dance floor with tables and chairs around it. Lonely GIs dunking donuts in fresh coffee would loaf there, listening to the latest American hits. Rainbow Corner never closed its doors. The key had been symbolically thrown away the day of the grand opening in November 1942.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

“Oh do not let the Dead March play O’er these at Madingley do stay For they were young and old-style gay, Play their music of the day; Tunes of Dorsey, songs of Bing, Let them hear Glenn Miller’s swing Then too the crosses well may sway With those at Madingley do stay.”
― Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany