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Bombs Away!: The World War II Bombing Campaigns over Europe
Bombs Away! covers strategic bombing in Europe during World War II, that is, all aerial bombardment of a strategic nature which took place between 1939 and 1945. In addition to American (U.S. Army Air Forces) and British (RAF Bomber Command) strategic aerial campaigns against Germany, this book covers German use of strategic bombing during the Nazi’s conquest of the Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa, and the V 1 and V 2, where the Luftwaffe targeted Warsaw and Rotterdam (known as the Rotterdam Blitz). In addition, the book covers the blitzes against London and the bombing of other British industrial and port cities, such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Southampton, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff, and Coventry bombed during the Battle of Britain.
The twin Allied campaigns against Germany—the USAAF by day, the RAF by night—built up into massive bombing of German industrial areas, notably the Ruhr, followed by attacks directly on cities such as Hamburg, Kassel, Pforzheim, Mainz, Cologne, Bremen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Dortmund, Frankfurt, and the still controversial fire-bombing of Hamburg and Dresden. In addition to obvious targets like aircraft and tank manufacturers, ball bearing factories and plants that manufactured abrasives and grinding wheels were high priority targets.
Petroleum refineries were a key target with USAAF aircraft based in North Africa and later Italy, bombing the massive refinery complexes in and around Ploesti, Romania, until August 1944 when the Soviet Red Army captured the area. Other missions included industrial targets in southern Germany like Regensburg and Schweinfurt.
Missions to the Nazi capital, Berlin, started in 1940 and continued through March 1945. Throughout the war there were 314 air raids on Berlin.
All of this is covered in detail with authoritative text and hundreds of archival photographs, many rare or never before published.
The twin Allied campaigns against Germany—the USAAF by day, the RAF by night—built up into massive bombing of German industrial areas, notably the Ruhr, followed by attacks directly on cities such as Hamburg, Kassel, Pforzheim, Mainz, Cologne, Bremen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Dortmund, Frankfurt, and the still controversial fire-bombing of Hamburg and Dresden. In addition to obvious targets like aircraft and tank manufacturers, ball bearing factories and plants that manufactured abrasives and grinding wheels were high priority targets.
Petroleum refineries were a key target with USAAF aircraft based in North Africa and later Italy, bombing the massive refinery complexes in and around Ploesti, Romania, until August 1944 when the Soviet Red Army captured the area. Other missions included industrial targets in southern Germany like Regensburg and Schweinfurt.
Missions to the Nazi capital, Berlin, started in 1940 and continued through March 1945. Throughout the war there were 314 air raids on Berlin.
All of this is covered in detail with authoritative text and hundreds of archival photographs, many rare or never before published.
- GenresHistoryWorld War II
300 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2011
6 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
John R. Bruning
24 books125 followersJohn Bruning is the author or coauthor of twenty-two non-fiction books, including four New York Times best sellers, and seven national best sellers, including the critically acclaimed "Race of Aces," "Indestructible," "Outlaw Platoon" (with Sean Parnell) and "House to House" (with David Bellavia).
In 2011, he received a Thomas Jefferson Award for his photojournalism and reporting in Afghanistan during the surge in 2010.
He lives in Oregon with his family and writes with an office staff that includes three dogs and two cats, one of whom identifies as canine and enjoys swimming, hiking and urban exploration.
For further information on John, his office staff and his published words, please check out:
johnbruning.com
John R Bruning on Facebook
and Sylvie_the_canine_cat on Instagram
In 2011, he received a Thomas Jefferson Award for his photojournalism and reporting in Afghanistan during the surge in 2010.
He lives in Oregon with his family and writes with an office staff that includes three dogs and two cats, one of whom identifies as canine and enjoys swimming, hiking and urban exploration.
For further information on John, his office staff and his published words, please check out:
johnbruning.com
John R Bruning on Facebook
and Sylvie_the_canine_cat on Instagram
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 13, 2011
“When the commander arrived, the room went silent and the tension immediately spiked. Behind their old-man facades, these boy-warriors prayed for an easy mission. The daily toll of deep strikes had left them weary.
“They’d long since learned that the glory they saw back home on small town silver screens simply did not exist in the skies over Germany. Physically and psychologically, the strategic bombing campaign was a death march that only the luckiest and strongest would survive.”
--“Bombs Away,” page 166.
“Bombs Away: The World War II Bombing Campaigns over Europe” is an enormously oversized book (so big, in fact, that it caused some moderate pain when, ironically, it landed on my foot) filled with reams of photographs and which contains more of the human element than other similar titles. In the introduction, author, John R. Bruning, who, during the 1990’s, interviewed many veterans of the European air war, promises that his book is less about “aircraft specifications” than about “the men who flew the machines and the civilians on the ground who endured the fall of their bombs.”
The book not only includes the winning human element, however; it does describe the types of planes (German, American, and British) used in every major bombing campaign in the European Theater and, most interestingly, frames the entire story in terms of an Italian who first conceived that superior air power would grant victory to whichever country possessed and utilized it. A veteran commander of the Great War, Giulio Douhet wrote what Bruning describes as “the single most influential book on military airpower for the next thirty years,” a book that was “nothing short of an apocalyptic vision of societal destruction through aerial bombardment.”
Bruning relates how the Luftwaffe used “Douhet’s playbook” to destroy civilians in Guernica, Spain, in 1933 and in Warsaw six years later. The Germans were able to subdue France and the Low Countries quickly, also because of their superior air force. And superior air power is obviously what kept the British from succumbing to the Germans when the two countries pitted their air forces against each other in the skies above Britain during the summer of 1940. The subject of British resolve during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz is a tremendous subject in anyone’s hands, but especially in Bruning’s as he sums up the chapter thus: “Moral never wavered. Britain did not submit to terror. Guilio Douhet’s nihilistic vision of future warfare, once put to the ultimate test, proved bankrupt. The Germans gave up on the invasion of England . . . “
The air war replaced the bloody trenches of the Great War but it was very costly in terms of lives lost. And although the Allied plan to end the war by targeting Germany's munitions factories and fuel supplies fell short of its immediate goal – bringing Nazi Germany to its knees quickly (the attempt which Bruning shows clearly in several chapters, including one on the missions to Ploesti, Romania where the Nazi war machine kept oil refineries) -- Bruning also points out that during the Ardennes Offensive the slim German hopes for victory were pinned only on the remote possibility of stealing Allied fuel. Their own supplies were running short thanks to the strategic bombing missions of the U.S. and British aircrews.
Covering the major campaigns, the strategies, the planes, and most of all, the people involved, “Bombs Away” uses superior prose, quotes, and numerous photographs to bring the story of the air war in Europe to life in a powerful and unforgettable way.
“They’d long since learned that the glory they saw back home on small town silver screens simply did not exist in the skies over Germany. Physically and psychologically, the strategic bombing campaign was a death march that only the luckiest and strongest would survive.”
--“Bombs Away,” page 166.
“Bombs Away: The World War II Bombing Campaigns over Europe” is an enormously oversized book (so big, in fact, that it caused some moderate pain when, ironically, it landed on my foot) filled with reams of photographs and which contains more of the human element than other similar titles. In the introduction, author, John R. Bruning, who, during the 1990’s, interviewed many veterans of the European air war, promises that his book is less about “aircraft specifications” than about “the men who flew the machines and the civilians on the ground who endured the fall of their bombs.”
The book not only includes the winning human element, however; it does describe the types of planes (German, American, and British) used in every major bombing campaign in the European Theater and, most interestingly, frames the entire story in terms of an Italian who first conceived that superior air power would grant victory to whichever country possessed and utilized it. A veteran commander of the Great War, Giulio Douhet wrote what Bruning describes as “the single most influential book on military airpower for the next thirty years,” a book that was “nothing short of an apocalyptic vision of societal destruction through aerial bombardment.”
Bruning relates how the Luftwaffe used “Douhet’s playbook” to destroy civilians in Guernica, Spain, in 1933 and in Warsaw six years later. The Germans were able to subdue France and the Low Countries quickly, also because of their superior air force. And superior air power is obviously what kept the British from succumbing to the Germans when the two countries pitted their air forces against each other in the skies above Britain during the summer of 1940. The subject of British resolve during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz is a tremendous subject in anyone’s hands, but especially in Bruning’s as he sums up the chapter thus: “Moral never wavered. Britain did not submit to terror. Guilio Douhet’s nihilistic vision of future warfare, once put to the ultimate test, proved bankrupt. The Germans gave up on the invasion of England . . . “
The air war replaced the bloody trenches of the Great War but it was very costly in terms of lives lost. And although the Allied plan to end the war by targeting Germany's munitions factories and fuel supplies fell short of its immediate goal – bringing Nazi Germany to its knees quickly (the attempt which Bruning shows clearly in several chapters, including one on the missions to Ploesti, Romania where the Nazi war machine kept oil refineries) -- Bruning also points out that during the Ardennes Offensive the slim German hopes for victory were pinned only on the remote possibility of stealing Allied fuel. Their own supplies were running short thanks to the strategic bombing missions of the U.S. and British aircrews.
Covering the major campaigns, the strategies, the planes, and most of all, the people involved, “Bombs Away” uses superior prose, quotes, and numerous photographs to bring the story of the air war in Europe to life in a powerful and unforgettable way.
January 2, 2013
Zenith Press‘s “Bombs Away!: The World War II Bombing Campaigns over Europe" by John R. Bruning is a must have for all World War II and aviation buffs. The book is large, coffee-table size volume. The book is full of amazing pictures. The photographs give greater coverage of the people in the war than most books. The coverage is more about the aircraft crews and ground support personnel than the aircraft specs. You learn about the people who endured the bombardment as well.
“Bombs Away!” takes account of the fascinating human element. It also describes the types of aircraft used on both sides and used in every major bombing campaign in the European Theater.
The author discusses strategic bombing theories. John R. Bruning provides a foundation by taking the reader through the different air campaigns in the Spanish Civil War, Blitzkrieg attacks on Poland, France and Britain before applying the majority of the book to the American and British assaults on the Third Reich.
Mr. Bruning gives the particulars on how each command determined on their own approach to bombing Germany (the US daylight vs. the UK night-time), the aircraft they employ, their particular achievements and disappointments. We learn of the eventual impact of the combined strategic bombing campaign.
The book’s manuscript provides a first-rate rundown of bombing campaigns in the European Theater. However, the book's selling-point is the illustrations. While some of the pictures have been seen before and are familiar. The author collects them in one place. The volume contains nearly 480 black and white plus color photographs and maps. They describe both Allied and Axis aircraft, aircrew and the commanders. You experience in-flight air battles. You understand the damage to different targets.
Mr. Bruning covers the major campaigns, the plans, the planes, and the people. He does this with fine prose, wonderful quotes, and dazzling photographs that bring the story to life. The book is a must for both military and community libraries.
“Bombs Away!” takes account of the fascinating human element. It also describes the types of aircraft used on both sides and used in every major bombing campaign in the European Theater.
The author discusses strategic bombing theories. John R. Bruning provides a foundation by taking the reader through the different air campaigns in the Spanish Civil War, Blitzkrieg attacks on Poland, France and Britain before applying the majority of the book to the American and British assaults on the Third Reich.
Mr. Bruning gives the particulars on how each command determined on their own approach to bombing Germany (the US daylight vs. the UK night-time), the aircraft they employ, their particular achievements and disappointments. We learn of the eventual impact of the combined strategic bombing campaign.
The book’s manuscript provides a first-rate rundown of bombing campaigns in the European Theater. However, the book's selling-point is the illustrations. While some of the pictures have been seen before and are familiar. The author collects them in one place. The volume contains nearly 480 black and white plus color photographs and maps. They describe both Allied and Axis aircraft, aircrew and the commanders. You experience in-flight air battles. You understand the damage to different targets.
Mr. Bruning covers the major campaigns, the plans, the planes, and the people. He does this with fine prose, wonderful quotes, and dazzling photographs that bring the story to life. The book is a must for both military and community libraries.
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