Bloody Skies Review in Air Classics
Was very pleased to see the following review in the latest edition of Air Classics (March 2019). Thank you, Air Classics! The review states:
Bloody Skies: U.S. Eighth Air Force Battle Damage in World War II
"Bloody Skies: U.S. Eighth Air Force Battle Damage in World War II" by Nicholas A. Veronico is a quality, soft-bound publication comprising 208-pages and 255 illustrations. Bloody Skies is history revisited with images combining elegant as well as concise captions, told by an author with a deep understanding of both this history's import and its personal impact upon untold numbers of combatants and their people back home. The expected photos are there -- as in other books -- but, unusually with captions detailing the missions, their crews, and their fates. So many stories are told in this book -- some, amazingly, in only a single photo.
Bloody Skies shows the reader incredible battle damage, dying aircraft, happy crew faces, and how lives were lived in unforgiving skies.
The evolution of daylight strategic bombing by the Eighth Air Force is accurately portrayed and includes the largely failed experiments with the rare B-40 and B-41. Veronico describes the tactics and flying challenges presented to fighter and bomber crews in a way that leaves the reader with an intuitive understanding -- having the effect of making this history leap off the pages into the reader's imagination.
This book sits apart from most history books on the author's ability to inter-weave facts within the context of their times as well as the human dimension. In the last chapter, the author describes his serendipitous learning of the last moments of a relative lost over hostile territory during a bombing mission of the 390th Bomb Group. This Exemplifies the extraordinary final actions of an officer to save this crew in the doomed B-17G "Decatur Deb" after a terrifying brief duel marked by extreme violence.
Bloody Skies makes the statistics of the Mighty Eighth a personal experience shared by the hundreds of thousands who served with that famous unit over thousands of missions in Flying Fortresses, Liberators, Lightnings, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs. Detailed information regarding statistics and units are also significant in this book, which belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in the Mighty Eighth and World War II. (4 Stars)
Bloody Skies: U.S. Eighth Air Force Battle Damage in World War II
"Bloody Skies: U.S. Eighth Air Force Battle Damage in World War II" by Nicholas A. Veronico is a quality, soft-bound publication comprising 208-pages and 255 illustrations. Bloody Skies is history revisited with images combining elegant as well as concise captions, told by an author with a deep understanding of both this history's import and its personal impact upon untold numbers of combatants and their people back home. The expected photos are there -- as in other books -- but, unusually with captions detailing the missions, their crews, and their fates. So many stories are told in this book -- some, amazingly, in only a single photo.
Bloody Skies shows the reader incredible battle damage, dying aircraft, happy crew faces, and how lives were lived in unforgiving skies.
The evolution of daylight strategic bombing by the Eighth Air Force is accurately portrayed and includes the largely failed experiments with the rare B-40 and B-41. Veronico describes the tactics and flying challenges presented to fighter and bomber crews in a way that leaves the reader with an intuitive understanding -- having the effect of making this history leap off the pages into the reader's imagination.
This book sits apart from most history books on the author's ability to inter-weave facts within the context of their times as well as the human dimension. In the last chapter, the author describes his serendipitous learning of the last moments of a relative lost over hostile territory during a bombing mission of the 390th Bomb Group. This Exemplifies the extraordinary final actions of an officer to save this crew in the doomed B-17G "Decatur Deb" after a terrifying brief duel marked by extreme violence.
Bloody Skies makes the statistics of the Mighty Eighth a personal experience shared by the hundreds of thousands who served with that famous unit over thousands of missions in Flying Fortresses, Liberators, Lightnings, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs. Detailed information regarding statistics and units are also significant in this book, which belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in the Mighty Eighth and World War II. (4 Stars)
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