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Bombs Away
A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America's great twentieth-century writers
On the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath-and at the height of the American war effort-John Steinbeck, one of the most prolific and influential literary figures of his generation, wrote Bombs Away, a nonfiction account of his experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II. Now, for the first time since its original publication in 1942, Penguin Classics presents this exclusive edition of Steinbeck's introduction to the then-nascent U.S. Army Air Force and its bomber crew-the essential core unit behind American air power that Steinbeck described as "the greatest team in the world."
185 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1942
64 people are currently reading
1033 people want to read
About the author
John Steinbeck
1,041 books26.5k followersJohn Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
October 3, 2024
Hemingway said he would willingly cut off three fingers of his throwing hand rather than write a book like this one. I think he was being generous.
May 22, 2022
I enjoyed this book. It gave positive praise to the “team” that flew bombers.
Well written and descriptive in a pure Steinbeck fashion.
Well written and descriptive in a pure Steinbeck fashion.
November 8, 2013
Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team by John Steinbeck. (Penguin Classic, 156 pages, paper, 1942) Never heard of Bombs Away by Steinbeck? (Neither had I. I found this at the Johnson City Public Library book sale.) Probably because you never thought Steinbeck would write such a bias pro-military book. Which this is. Bombs Away is hardly a masterpiece on the order of Canary Row or The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck wrote this for the military to help bolster support for the Air Force in 1942. Steinbeck had two goals in mind: to show the public that our air crews were the best of the best and the country will win the war because of your support! Bombs Away is just about that heavy handed. Hemingway thought it was trash.
But there is an interesting story at work here. Steinbeck is fairly honest in telling us about the teamwork and effort that goes into training a crew to deliver the payloads. He’s a bit short with the ground crew and the command structure and barely mentions the co-pilot. But he does praise the average American kid for having talents and skills to do more than just march and shoot. He gives praise, I think where praise is due. Hemingway was all about “the manly man” and his role in war. Steinbeck would probably have been more pacifist with an edge towards socialism.
But the tables are turned here. Steinbeck doesn’t support the war. He supports the warrior. The style is too sparse for my liking. It’s written I think more for the style of the Army Air Force public relations campaigns than for a great novel. But, in the time, that may have all that was needed. When you send your boy off to fight and die do you really want flowery language?
But there is an interesting story at work here. Steinbeck is fairly honest in telling us about the teamwork and effort that goes into training a crew to deliver the payloads. He’s a bit short with the ground crew and the command structure and barely mentions the co-pilot. But he does praise the average American kid for having talents and skills to do more than just march and shoot. He gives praise, I think where praise is due. Hemingway was all about “the manly man” and his role in war. Steinbeck would probably have been more pacifist with an edge towards socialism.
But the tables are turned here. Steinbeck doesn’t support the war. He supports the warrior. The style is too sparse for my liking. It’s written I think more for the style of the Army Air Force public relations campaigns than for a great novel. But, in the time, that may have all that was needed. When you send your boy off to fight and die do you really want flowery language?
June 25, 2024
Has any propaganda ever been so powerfully and beautifully written as John Steinbeck ginning up bomber crew enlistees for the U.S. Army Air Force in 1942? Talk about bringing the big guns to bear!
So, yeah, nobelist John FRIGGING Steinbeck tells us what the members of a bomber crew do and propounds on the American exceptionalism that will make our crews the best in the world. And sure, some of them will die nobly, but those who survive will have amazing employment opportunities after the war.
What an incredible counter to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
The only other propaganda that comes as close to this as art in my mind is 1966's #1 pop hit "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler or the entire lifetime output of Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, Steve Canyon).
What a weird and glorious and awful artifact of World War II.
So, yeah, nobelist John FRIGGING Steinbeck tells us what the members of a bomber crew do and propounds on the American exceptionalism that will make our crews the best in the world. And sure, some of them will die nobly, but those who survive will have amazing employment opportunities after the war.
What an incredible counter to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
The only other propaganda that comes as close to this as art in my mind is 1966's #1 pop hit "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler or the entire lifetime output of Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, Steve Canyon).
What a weird and glorious and awful artifact of World War II.
March 26, 2024
⭐️3.5
What this is, and what it was written to be, is an informative insight into the roles of a Bomber Crew in the Air Force during World War II.
I gave this a 3.5 because although Steinbeck does a masterful job of outlining the lives and duties of each member of a bomber crew, it is ultimately just that, an informational guide.
He does add some characters to play the roles but that is as far as it goes from him story wise. I am sure this played an important role in 1942 to get young Americans involved in a largely unheard of faction of the military.
What this is, and what it was written to be, is an informative insight into the roles of a Bomber Crew in the Air Force during World War II.
I gave this a 3.5 because although Steinbeck does a masterful job of outlining the lives and duties of each member of a bomber crew, it is ultimately just that, an informational guide.
He does add some characters to play the roles but that is as far as it goes from him story wise. I am sure this played an important role in 1942 to get young Americans involved in a largely unheard of faction of the military.
January 30, 2019
What even is this? Propaganda? I can't believe Steinbeck wrote this. I did not enjoy this at all. I should have expected it from reading the blurb, but I am also really curious so I read it anyway. It's too pro-military, pro-america, just propaganda. Not for me.
August 16, 2016
I didn't really expect to like Bombs Away--it's a propaganda novel, and I'm not American, I'm not in the middle of a war, and I know that the details described are so outdated that they must have very little modern relevance. However, despite all this, the book turned out to be fascinating. I liked the blow-by-blow descriptions of how each member of the team is selected and trained. I like the hint of Steinbeck you see in the novel, even though he is trying to keep his opinions to himself and play things pretty straight. I haven't looked into his life much yet (I have a biography that I'm saving for a rainy day), but I know he was essentially a pacifist and so writing these propaganda novels must have produced a lot of ambivalence in him. I wish he had also written some more balanced depictions of World War II after it was over.
January 27, 2021
This is nonfiction. Steinbeck wrote this as an homage to the crews of the B-17 and how they needed to act as a unit.
I picked it up just because Steinbeck wrote it. I did not know of its existence prior to seeing it in Libby's catalogue.
I picked it up just because Steinbeck wrote it. I did not know of its existence prior to seeing it in Libby's catalogue.
September 4, 2023
Ernest Hemingway once said he "would rather have cut three fingers off his throwing hand" than to have written such as book as Bombs Away. So begins James Meredith's introduction. I would rather cut off my whole hand than ever read this book again. However, keeping in mind the purpose of its writing helps to ease my irritation a little (only a little).
Added to these devastating casualty statistics is the fact that the "Flying Fortress" dropped "astronomical amounts of conventional ordinance, primarily on the manufacturing and industrial infrastructure of the Axis countries, and yes, this long range bomber also directly attacked the basic fabric of civilization of these nations" (again from Meredith's introduction). I think of events such as the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg and the ultimate inhumanity of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki....and all that has followed. So, no, I just can't with a book like this. I just can't.
"This book is intended for the men of the future bomber teams and for their parents, for the people at home. It may be an advantage to the prospective cadent or gunner, to the radio man or crew chief, to know what is in store for him when he makes application for the Air Force; and this book is intended to be read by the mothers and fathers of the prospective Air Force men, to the end that they will have some idea of the training their sons have undertaken."This "non-fiction" account of the training and preparation of bomber crews is as subjective as it is possible to be and still be labeled "non-fiction." It's much closer to propaganda or advertising. In fact, I was only a few pages into this when the narrator's voice in my head started to sound like those old 1940's radio broadcasters or newsreel narrators. Or those early Disney cartoons like Goofy's "How to Play Baseball."
"Thus we see that we have in America individual young men who will make great members of the bomber crews, but we have another tradition and another practice which guarantees that these crews will be able to act as units. From the time of their being able to walk, our boys and girls take part in team playing. From one ol' cat to basketball, to sand-lot baseball, to football, American boys learn instinctively to react as members of a team. They learn that not everyone can be pitcher or quarterback, but that each team must be a balance of various skills."Yes, I know that propaganda like this was likely an important part of "the war effort" of the time. But I flinch even more when I think about the catastrophically higher death and injury rates of bomber crews and air men to infantry during that war. Frequent sports metaphors throughout the book only make it feel even more tactless and insensitive.
Added to these devastating casualty statistics is the fact that the "Flying Fortress" dropped "astronomical amounts of conventional ordinance, primarily on the manufacturing and industrial infrastructure of the Axis countries, and yes, this long range bomber also directly attacked the basic fabric of civilization of these nations" (again from Meredith's introduction). I think of events such as the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg and the ultimate inhumanity of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki....and all that has followed. So, no, I just can't with a book like this. I just can't.
May 11, 2023
Anti war but pro solider books are just🤤🤤🤤 yes this was propganda😦 do i care no😊
September 6, 2025
Yes, it’s propaganda. But probably effective in its time, and interesting from a historical perspective.
April 8, 2012
Be advised, if you read Bombs Away, that you will not find it to be the "typical" John Steinbeck book -- if indeed there is such a thing. It is not an epic novel like The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, nor is it a short tale on the order of Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, or The Pearl. Rather, Bombs Away is a nonfiction work chronicling, as its subtitle indicates, the story of a bomber team from World War II. Steinbeck wrote the book in 1942 on behalf of what were then called the U.S. Army Air Forces; its intent was not only to tell the story of the young men who flew planes like the B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators, but to encourage qualified candidates to join the Air Force and share in its high-risk work.
As U.S. Air Force Academy professor James Meredith points out in a perceptive foreword to the Penguin Books edition of this book, Bombs Away can be regarded as propaganda, but propaganda with a "politically benign purpose" (xiii). It strikes me that Bombs Away is only propaganda in the same sense that Laurence Olivier's 1944 film of Henry V, funded in part by the British Government and made in consultation with Winston Churchill himself, can be called propaganda. In spite of propagandistic qualities, Olivier's Henry V works as a film, and Steinbeck's Bombs Away works as a book.
Steinbeck's style is not always to my liking; he often writes "which" where he should write "that," and every time he does so I imagine his original English teacher at Salinas High School cringing and saying, "Oh, no, not again." But then there are passages of pure poetry, like this one from the chapter "The Pilot":
There is nothing like the first flight. It can never be repeated and the feeling of it can never be duplicated. It is a new dimension discovered....The great law has been broken. Probably men have wanted to revolt against the law of gravity since they first noticed that birds and some insects are given a dispensation against it. The great envy that children have of birds, the dreams of flying if one only knew a trick with the hands or could press a magic button under the arm, the complete hunger for flight that is in all of us -- all these are answered in the first take-off. Later the preoccupation will be with methods and techniques and instruments, but the first pure joy in release, there is nothing like it. These things, these thoughts and words, have been trite until it happens to you and then the feeling is ringed with fire. (96)
The book starts with the bomber itself, and then devotes chapters to the work of the crew members: the bombardier, the aerial gunner, the navigator, the pilot, the aerial engineer/crew chief, and the radio engineer. Steinbeck tells the story of each crew member through semi-fictional, Everyman-style vignettes that set forth a "typical" young American's journey out of civilian life and into membership on a bomber crew. The last chapter, "The Bomber Team," emphasizes the crew's coalescing as a unified team capable of carrying out the dangerous work of bombing operations against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Bombs Away is well-illustrated with many photographs that bring to life the era in which the bombers were made and the men were found to fly them. It is not a perfect book, but for Steinbeck fans, or for readers with an interest in World War II aviation history, it is likely to be a rewarding book.
As U.S. Air Force Academy professor James Meredith points out in a perceptive foreword to the Penguin Books edition of this book, Bombs Away can be regarded as propaganda, but propaganda with a "politically benign purpose" (xiii). It strikes me that Bombs Away is only propaganda in the same sense that Laurence Olivier's 1944 film of Henry V, funded in part by the British Government and made in consultation with Winston Churchill himself, can be called propaganda. In spite of propagandistic qualities, Olivier's Henry V works as a film, and Steinbeck's Bombs Away works as a book.
Steinbeck's style is not always to my liking; he often writes "which" where he should write "that," and every time he does so I imagine his original English teacher at Salinas High School cringing and saying, "Oh, no, not again." But then there are passages of pure poetry, like this one from the chapter "The Pilot":
There is nothing like the first flight. It can never be repeated and the feeling of it can never be duplicated. It is a new dimension discovered....The great law has been broken. Probably men have wanted to revolt against the law of gravity since they first noticed that birds and some insects are given a dispensation against it. The great envy that children have of birds, the dreams of flying if one only knew a trick with the hands or could press a magic button under the arm, the complete hunger for flight that is in all of us -- all these are answered in the first take-off. Later the preoccupation will be with methods and techniques and instruments, but the first pure joy in release, there is nothing like it. These things, these thoughts and words, have been trite until it happens to you and then the feeling is ringed with fire. (96)
The book starts with the bomber itself, and then devotes chapters to the work of the crew members: the bombardier, the aerial gunner, the navigator, the pilot, the aerial engineer/crew chief, and the radio engineer. Steinbeck tells the story of each crew member through semi-fictional, Everyman-style vignettes that set forth a "typical" young American's journey out of civilian life and into membership on a bomber crew. The last chapter, "The Bomber Team," emphasizes the crew's coalescing as a unified team capable of carrying out the dangerous work of bombing operations against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Bombs Away is well-illustrated with many photographs that bring to life the era in which the bombers were made and the men were found to fly them. It is not a perfect book, but for Steinbeck fans, or for readers with an interest in World War II aviation history, it is likely to be a rewarding book.
December 28, 2017
Bombs Away is a little known work of Steinbeck and for good reasons. The positive view of air power and the prowess of the heavy bomber was disputed over Schweinfurt barely a year after the book was written and in modern times the overt propaganda style is not in good taste. However, this book is interesting because of the vision Steinbeck has of the American society in the 40s. Gone are the time of the depression and young American men are given the chance to rise to the occasion (women are barely mentioned). On the surface this book makes life in the air force sound like a kind of scout camp; but beneath is a real sympathy for the fighting men and their individuality and skill. How the survivors of the Schweinfurt raids felt about this book I can only guess (Martin Middelbrook's excellent book "The Schweinfurt–Regensburg Mission" gives a good description of the first raid); but this book must be read as a time capsule from 1942 and not as an enduring piece of art.
September 28, 2019
The Book is basically in your face propaganda for American bomber airplane crew, war and guns. He tried to show how cool it is to fight in the war and to be in the airforce. If I weren't interested in airplanes I would give even a lower rating. It is of course admirable that Steinbeck performed his patriotic duty during the the WWII, however, it doesn't make it a good book.
March 8, 2024
Amazing that Steinbeck wrote this. 5 stars for propaganda. 1 star for accuracy.
April 16, 2025
ok, I lied. sometimes Steinbeck does miss :(
July 14, 2018
The reviews on the back cover claim it's more exciting than his fiction. It's not. This was written during World War II to teach Americans about the training and responsibilities of bomber crews. It's interesting from a historical perspective, but it can drag at times. Because of the time period, it also has a lot of repetition of jingoistic "Americans are the best" statements. Some of them don't make much sense, such as Americans being the best at teamwork because they play team sports. Even in the 1940s, this certainly wasn't exclusive to the United States. He also goes out of his way to tell the reader again and again that everyone on the crew is of equal importance and that the pilot isn't above any of the rest. However, it is noticeable that there are 29 pages devoted to pilot training, with only 8 about the crew chief and 4 about the radio engineer. With all of that said, he does combine the basic discussion of training with several narratives. In each chapter, a fictional (I assume) character is introduced to show what background is helpful and walk the reader through the training. These characters combine to form a bomber team, and the reader gets to experience their final training missions through their stories. This helps keep the reader engaged. Overall, it's got a bit of interesting (although partially outdated) information about training of pilots, navigators, bombardiers, gunners, radio engineers, and aerial engineers. I would not say, however, that it is nearly as interesting as his novels.
March 26, 2018
It’s a pretty good description of the training a bomber team went through. I actually really enjoyed reading those parts. But there’s not much else going for it. Steinbeck seems to have really phoned it in. It’s missing his normally descriptive writing and is instead written in a very basic style that feels aimed at grade schoolers. His best novels and nonfiction work are full of great characters, but the people here are totally generic and aren’t explored at all (I'm assuming they're creations and not anyone he actually met). I guess that’s the point since it’s designed to make the average American male feel like he could be these people. There’s also a lot of really weird characterizations of the types of people who would fit each role and what they would be like after the war, all of which reality has shown to be false.
October 25, 2019
Steinbeck Not Glenn Beck continues as I finally finish "Bombs Away."
Not that it was a long book but my spare pleasure reading time has been minimal as I diligently work to complete one of my research projects so that I can begin writing again.
Up next, "The Moon Is Down" written by Steinbeck in 1942. While a novel (and later adapted into a film) it was written to encourage the European resistance forces battling Hitler's occupying armies.
It would be Steinbeck's last until the 1945 release of "Cannery Row."
Not that it was a long book but my spare pleasure reading time has been minimal as I diligently work to complete one of my research projects so that I can begin writing again.
Up next, "The Moon Is Down" written by Steinbeck in 1942. While a novel (and later adapted into a film) it was written to encourage the European resistance forces battling Hitler's occupying armies.
It would be Steinbeck's last until the 1945 release of "Cannery Row."
August 25, 2021
I love Steinbeck and have some perverse infatuation with the huge mechanisms behind the great wars. Would NEVER have finished this if it wasn't for those two things. Bomb's Away was, unfortunately, written much like a gov't propaganda flyer but there were enough details and technical aspects to keep me going. Short book. Took me almost a year and a half to finish.
June 17, 2019
A prpaganda-piece, Steinbeck style. Probably only worthwile for Steinbeck fans or airforce afficionados.
April 6, 2020
I've read a few Steinbeck titles in the last couple of years: The Log of the Sea of Cortez; The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights; and most notably, Once There Was a War. I use that war reporting to teach students the secrets of military writing, fiction or non-fiction. Only recently did I realize he had another WWII non-fiction, and I ordered it immediately, and didn't let it ripen on the shelf for two decades (which is SOP in this household) before getting to it.
Well, it's not very good, actually. I won't be teaching this one. You can tell that he put a lot of time in visiting the training bases, flying with the recruits, probably touring the factories. He got practice telling personal stories while having to be vague about the actual life details, and using false names. That would be one of the things that Steinbeck, being a novelist, found relatively easy to do; but which regular reporters had great trouble with. Those other reporters are said to have been jealous of Steinbeck, who had a gift for getting stuff past the censors, because he knew how to be generic, knew how to disguise.
But this particular project feels a little contrived, because of its purpose: to explain strategic bomber teams to the public, with the hope of encouraging young men to sign up for it.
The structure of the book is that there's a chapter on the aircraft itself (and he was focused on a B-17 crew, but he compares and contrasts the B-24, without giving anything away to the Enemy), followed by a chapter each on the different jobs that crewmen are trained for: pilot, navigator, bombardier, crew chief, gunner, and radio engineer. It ends with a chapter on the team as a whole, and a chapter on the missions these bombers will participate in. Woven through these chapters is a running narrative on how folks were recruited, how they were trained, and how the team comes together.
The theme of the book is that it takes a team, not a heroic individual, to make this thing work. [Important assertion: "There is no place in the Air Force for pseudoreligious martyrdom."] It repeatedly notes that pilots get all the attention, but that the other folks are more vital to the mission, in a number of ways. (I was interested to note that he seems to avoid using the term "co-pilot" in this, with only one or two exceptions.) He follows a single person in each role, giving his example a name, but we don't know how real this person is. Steinbeck knows how to characterize, though, so you do feel as though you're getting a realistic sense of how a person goes through this training. But the chapters tend to come down to a number of platitudes, generally toward the end. He has taken on the role of telling the public how to think of this war, and how to think of its aerial practitioners, and the preaching and the propaganda get a little too obvious at times.
There are only a few flashes of Steinbeck wit, but I especially enjoyed his description of the history of WWII, including: "The world at large was so tired of war, so sick with war that it hoped it might never have to use these experiments. Of all the nations of the world, only Germany knew what it was going to do and where it was going with its aircraft. Germany, and the dark Aryans of Italy and the yellow Aryans of Japan developed air forces. The purpose was to blast and maim and kill." I like how he dismisses the Nazi racial theory with the back of his hand.
Another interesting point -- the book was written in early and mid-1942, after the Battle of Midway -- was the false information he had on actual battles. He touts the great successes of American heavy bombers against the Japanese fleet in both the Battle of the Coral Sea, and Midway. And, it's true, the bomber crews claimed several hits in both battles ... or their commanders did, anyway. The truth is that they were entirely ineffective. As far as history can tell, they didn't even get a near miss producing damage. Big zip. Goose egg. But he was probably told the opposite.
Steinbeck does foresee the degree to which commerce is going to be airborne after the War, and that the practice we were getting designing and building aircraft was going to usher in this future. I was amused to see that he thought passengers and cargo might be carried in strings of towed gliders...
This isn't a bad book. I learned several things about the era, about the training, and about the worldviews of the time. But the lack of underlined passages and marginal notes in my copy tell a story by themselves.
Well, it's not very good, actually. I won't be teaching this one. You can tell that he put a lot of time in visiting the training bases, flying with the recruits, probably touring the factories. He got practice telling personal stories while having to be vague about the actual life details, and using false names. That would be one of the things that Steinbeck, being a novelist, found relatively easy to do; but which regular reporters had great trouble with. Those other reporters are said to have been jealous of Steinbeck, who had a gift for getting stuff past the censors, because he knew how to be generic, knew how to disguise.
But this particular project feels a little contrived, because of its purpose: to explain strategic bomber teams to the public, with the hope of encouraging young men to sign up for it.
The structure of the book is that there's a chapter on the aircraft itself (and he was focused on a B-17 crew, but he compares and contrasts the B-24, without giving anything away to the Enemy), followed by a chapter each on the different jobs that crewmen are trained for: pilot, navigator, bombardier, crew chief, gunner, and radio engineer. It ends with a chapter on the team as a whole, and a chapter on the missions these bombers will participate in. Woven through these chapters is a running narrative on how folks were recruited, how they were trained, and how the team comes together.
The theme of the book is that it takes a team, not a heroic individual, to make this thing work. [Important assertion: "There is no place in the Air Force for pseudoreligious martyrdom."] It repeatedly notes that pilots get all the attention, but that the other folks are more vital to the mission, in a number of ways. (I was interested to note that he seems to avoid using the term "co-pilot" in this, with only one or two exceptions.) He follows a single person in each role, giving his example a name, but we don't know how real this person is. Steinbeck knows how to characterize, though, so you do feel as though you're getting a realistic sense of how a person goes through this training. But the chapters tend to come down to a number of platitudes, generally toward the end. He has taken on the role of telling the public how to think of this war, and how to think of its aerial practitioners, and the preaching and the propaganda get a little too obvious at times.
There are only a few flashes of Steinbeck wit, but I especially enjoyed his description of the history of WWII, including: "The world at large was so tired of war, so sick with war that it hoped it might never have to use these experiments. Of all the nations of the world, only Germany knew what it was going to do and where it was going with its aircraft. Germany, and the dark Aryans of Italy and the yellow Aryans of Japan developed air forces. The purpose was to blast and maim and kill." I like how he dismisses the Nazi racial theory with the back of his hand.
Another interesting point -- the book was written in early and mid-1942, after the Battle of Midway -- was the false information he had on actual battles. He touts the great successes of American heavy bombers against the Japanese fleet in both the Battle of the Coral Sea, and Midway. And, it's true, the bomber crews claimed several hits in both battles ... or their commanders did, anyway. The truth is that they were entirely ineffective. As far as history can tell, they didn't even get a near miss producing damage. Big zip. Goose egg. But he was probably told the opposite.
Steinbeck does foresee the degree to which commerce is going to be airborne after the War, and that the practice we were getting designing and building aircraft was going to usher in this future. I was amused to see that he thought passengers and cargo might be carried in strings of towed gliders...
This isn't a bad book. I learned several things about the era, about the training, and about the worldviews of the time. But the lack of underlined passages and marginal notes in my copy tell a story by themselves.
August 13, 2017
This is Steinbecks attempt at helping the allied during the war and he might have chosen the worst possible way of doing it by writing propaganda to recruit people to the American bomber force. He wrote this book, some 150 pages, of descriptions of the life of every member of a crew of a heavy bomber with real people (or made up real people) as examples.
There are a few problems here. First, what the heavy bomber crews did might have been heroic the same way as it is heroic swimming with sharks when you are bleeding, but they performed atrocities. There was no precision bombing of only military targets even when they tried, and some did not even try. Instead it was terror bombing of civilians, killing women and children and making millions of people homeless. The heavy bomber fleet made way more damage and killed way more innocent people than the nukes did and as far as I know the terror bombings didn't shorten the war by a single day.
Secondly, that being on a heavy bomber is as safe as Russian roulette is barely mentioned. I think only once and then in a way to downplay the risks. During the war the American Army lost 400k men. A fifth of those were fliers, mostly on bombers, despite the relative rarity of flight crews compared to infantry soldiers or other ground troops. The chance of surviving all mandatory missions in a single tout was statistically about 25%.
Thirdly, he tries to present every role as a unique opportunity to make a difference in the war by being carefully selected and trained. In reality they took everyone and gave them a minimum of training (increased towards the end of the war). For instance, the gunners of the planes are described as marksmen shooting down enemy fighters one shot at a time thanks to the American practice of shooting squirrels with .22 guns or air-rifles. Yeah, that is not what it was about. Gunners were more or less useless cannon fodder (and not included in post war planes). Their only purpose was to spew out enough lead that fighters attacked from non-optimal distances and angles, increasing the chances a little bit.
Then it is the "real world" people who are so happy and feeling so home in the bomber crews. Carefully selected "real world" people I guess. Or not real people. Or really stupid people. Real people should have been afraid, scared and worried.
I don't know how much Steinbeck knew about this during the war but he should have had plenty of time after the far to do something about the book and he did not. By the way, Hemingway said, about this book, that he would rather have cut off three fingers than write this book. Before reading it I dismissed that as theatrics, but now I get it.
In summary: No literary value, no science value and no historical value except as an example of war propaganda. An easy 1 star.
There are a few problems here. First, what the heavy bomber crews did might have been heroic the same way as it is heroic swimming with sharks when you are bleeding, but they performed atrocities. There was no precision bombing of only military targets even when they tried, and some did not even try. Instead it was terror bombing of civilians, killing women and children and making millions of people homeless. The heavy bomber fleet made way more damage and killed way more innocent people than the nukes did and as far as I know the terror bombings didn't shorten the war by a single day.
Secondly, that being on a heavy bomber is as safe as Russian roulette is barely mentioned. I think only once and then in a way to downplay the risks. During the war the American Army lost 400k men. A fifth of those were fliers, mostly on bombers, despite the relative rarity of flight crews compared to infantry soldiers or other ground troops. The chance of surviving all mandatory missions in a single tout was statistically about 25%.
Thirdly, he tries to present every role as a unique opportunity to make a difference in the war by being carefully selected and trained. In reality they took everyone and gave them a minimum of training (increased towards the end of the war). For instance, the gunners of the planes are described as marksmen shooting down enemy fighters one shot at a time thanks to the American practice of shooting squirrels with .22 guns or air-rifles. Yeah, that is not what it was about. Gunners were more or less useless cannon fodder (and not included in post war planes). Their only purpose was to spew out enough lead that fighters attacked from non-optimal distances and angles, increasing the chances a little bit.
Then it is the "real world" people who are so happy and feeling so home in the bomber crews. Carefully selected "real world" people I guess. Or not real people. Or really stupid people. Real people should have been afraid, scared and worried.
I don't know how much Steinbeck knew about this during the war but he should have had plenty of time after the far to do something about the book and he did not. By the way, Hemingway said, about this book, that he would rather have cut off three fingers than write this book. Before reading it I dismissed that as theatrics, but now I get it.
In summary: No literary value, no science value and no historical value except as an example of war propaganda. An easy 1 star.
July 26, 2021
"Men who know what they are doing are the best fighting instruments in the world. Nothing manufactured can take their place." (pp128-9)
It is unfair to compare a short, government-commissioned piece of propaganda to a writer's more seminal works, but it is testament to John Steinbeck's enduring qualities that Bombs Away, his freshman puff-piece for a nation that had just moved to a war footing, is not altogether valueless for a modern audience.
It is, truth be told, rather dry, going through a detailed accounting of the training undergone by bomber crews in preparation for combat, coloured with assurances to his domestic audience that their sons are in good hands with a competent military brass. Alongside the dry stuff he tries to provide a human-interest anchor to each chapter (a sketch of Joe the pilot from South Carolina, Bill the bombardier from Idaho, etc.), but whether these are real people or composite archetypes collected by Steinbeck is not clear. There is none of the stuff that would make Bombs Away a truly valuable piece – nothing on flaws, for example, or fear, or even the sensation of flight and combat – but Steinbeck is interested in the training and composition of young bomber crews, and despite the propagandistic restraints imposed upon him he manages to convey this interest to the reader.
It is not a patch on The Moon is Down, his propagandistic novella released around the same time (and which is, in my opinion, a hidden gem), or his stellar collection of war dispatches, Once There Was a War, but Bombs Away has merit, of a kind. There is not much literary merit – one or two lines of the sort quoted above, and Steinbeck's gift of understanding what makes different people tick – but there is a sort of quality to the piece.
I think this quality is there because Steinbeck's commission was not cynical; he believed in what he was writing, even if he would not have written it without official prompting. Not for him jingoistic tub-thumping – instead, Steinbeck makes it clear that America tried to avoid the war but could not, and now that the country was drawn into it, he was confident it would win. In the book he places a strong emphasis on teamwork ("the simple truth that concerted action of a group of men produces a good feeling in all of them" (pg. 28)) and on American exceptionalism ("in spite of the growing need of our sky-rocketing Air Force the country can produce the material" (pg. 92)). Steinbeck's patriotic confidence would soon be vindicated – though those three years would be long ones – and this is perhaps why the book has not aged as badly as it might otherwise have.
It is unfair to compare a short, government-commissioned piece of propaganda to a writer's more seminal works, but it is testament to John Steinbeck's enduring qualities that Bombs Away, his freshman puff-piece for a nation that had just moved to a war footing, is not altogether valueless for a modern audience.
It is, truth be told, rather dry, going through a detailed accounting of the training undergone by bomber crews in preparation for combat, coloured with assurances to his domestic audience that their sons are in good hands with a competent military brass. Alongside the dry stuff he tries to provide a human-interest anchor to each chapter (a sketch of Joe the pilot from South Carolina, Bill the bombardier from Idaho, etc.), but whether these are real people or composite archetypes collected by Steinbeck is not clear. There is none of the stuff that would make Bombs Away a truly valuable piece – nothing on flaws, for example, or fear, or even the sensation of flight and combat – but Steinbeck is interested in the training and composition of young bomber crews, and despite the propagandistic restraints imposed upon him he manages to convey this interest to the reader.
It is not a patch on The Moon is Down, his propagandistic novella released around the same time (and which is, in my opinion, a hidden gem), or his stellar collection of war dispatches, Once There Was a War, but Bombs Away has merit, of a kind. There is not much literary merit – one or two lines of the sort quoted above, and Steinbeck's gift of understanding what makes different people tick – but there is a sort of quality to the piece.
I think this quality is there because Steinbeck's commission was not cynical; he believed in what he was writing, even if he would not have written it without official prompting. Not for him jingoistic tub-thumping – instead, Steinbeck makes it clear that America tried to avoid the war but could not, and now that the country was drawn into it, he was confident it would win. In the book he places a strong emphasis on teamwork ("the simple truth that concerted action of a group of men produces a good feeling in all of them" (pg. 28)) and on American exceptionalism ("in spite of the growing need of our sky-rocketing Air Force the country can produce the material" (pg. 92)). Steinbeck's patriotic confidence would soon be vindicated – though those three years would be long ones – and this is perhaps why the book has not aged as badly as it might otherwise have.
Read
May 5, 2025Bombs Away is the second of two propaganda books Steinbeck wrote during the war. But unlike the earlier The Moon is Down, this one is a commissioned work for the American Airforce. Steinbeck was to provide the Airforce with a recruitment tool to inform both eligible young men and the general public about this relatively new and suddenly quite important branch of the armed forces. The result is a strange book - half infomercial for the Airforce’s most important weapon, the heavy bomber - half portrayal of the men who use it. And although the subtitle is "The Story of a Bomber Team" Steinbecks book is not really a narrative account.
The first chapter of the book focuses on the bomber itself, generally describing it's history, it's role in modern warfare and the training that is required of a crew to operate it. The following chapters are semi-fictional portraits of each crew member: what their individual profiles are, what their education looks like and what their tasks are on board. The book ends with the crew being united and going on their first missions together. In little scenes Steinbeck introduces us to the outer works and inner lives of Bill, Al, Allan, Joe, Abner and Harris, men motivated mostly by the appeal of action, national pride and glory. In this passage Allan, who will turn out to be the bombers navigator, sits at a bar and reflects on the fact that being a navigator is as good as being a pilot:
This passage might serve as an example of the kind of prose to be expected in this book. Over and over again we read in simple, sometimes repetitively structured sentences what a perfect match the American spirit and aerial warfare is, how demanding but purposeful the crewmembers find their experience and how strong and admirable the men become in the physical and mental training of the Airforce. This might have moved young men or even a general audience in wartime, but anyone who comes to this book in the hopes of finding the complex characters and pointed analyses of oppressive and unjust social conditions that are frequent in his earlier Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and notably even his other propaganda work, will be disappointed. Maybe it is the postmark of a commissioned work but Bombs away has a flatness and artificiality absent in other works of this author.
The first chapter of the book focuses on the bomber itself, generally describing it's history, it's role in modern warfare and the training that is required of a crew to operate it. The following chapters are semi-fictional portraits of each crew member: what their individual profiles are, what their education looks like and what their tasks are on board. The book ends with the crew being united and going on their first missions together. In little scenes Steinbeck introduces us to the outer works and inner lives of Bill, Al, Allan, Joe, Abner and Harris, men motivated mostly by the appeal of action, national pride and glory. In this passage Allan, who will turn out to be the bombers navigator, sits at a bar and reflects on the fact that being a navigator is as good as being a pilot:
He went to the counter and got another coke and sat down again. The war was going on. It had to be fought and won. If he wanted action, he would have it. A bomber doesn't hide ist head, even ist defensive work is attack. He would see all the action he wanted and would take a definitive and important part in it and when the war was won, he had a profession which would continue to be action.
This passage might serve as an example of the kind of prose to be expected in this book. Over and over again we read in simple, sometimes repetitively structured sentences what a perfect match the American spirit and aerial warfare is, how demanding but purposeful the crewmembers find their experience and how strong and admirable the men become in the physical and mental training of the Airforce. This might have moved young men or even a general audience in wartime, but anyone who comes to this book in the hopes of finding the complex characters and pointed analyses of oppressive and unjust social conditions that are frequent in his earlier Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and notably even his other propaganda work, will be disappointed. Maybe it is the postmark of a commissioned work but Bombs away has a flatness and artificiality absent in other works of this author.
July 26, 2023
Steinbeck was absolutely calling it in on this one.
I'm now nearing the end of my journey through the complete works of John Steinbeck. The handful of his works I have yet to read don't inspire too much optimism for anything mindblowing (The Short Reign of Pippin IV, Steinbeck in Vietnam, The Grapes of Wrath Journals, and A Life in Letters), but I know I've reached the bottom with Bombs Away.
This book is really that bad. It's propaganda, pure and simple. And though I know Steinbeck vacillated between patriotism and disaffection throughout his life, I'm still shocked by these moments of adoration for the war machine.
I knew going into this that I probably wouldn't like it, but I expected to see more of Steinbeck's character. This is a 185-page pamphlet about the U.S. Air Force. Often, sentences and ideas are repeated over and over again (a young man may enter the Air Force wanting to be a pilot or a navigator or a bombardier or a gunner or a radio operator or an engineer, but the Air Force will give him tests that will determine which position he is best suited for. Also, he may enter the Air Force wanting to be a pilot or a navigator or a bombardier...)
I searched these pages for some semblance of heart. There isn't any. It's dry. The only place where there's any style whatsoever (and it's light), is in the final few paragraphs, a sad attempt to stir some sense of pride in the men heading out to battle.
If you, like me, needed to read everything Steinbeck read, Bombs Away is unavoidable. For anyone else, I strongly suggest not giving it another thought.
I'm now nearing the end of my journey through the complete works of John Steinbeck. The handful of his works I have yet to read don't inspire too much optimism for anything mindblowing (The Short Reign of Pippin IV, Steinbeck in Vietnam, The Grapes of Wrath Journals, and A Life in Letters), but I know I've reached the bottom with Bombs Away.
This book is really that bad. It's propaganda, pure and simple. And though I know Steinbeck vacillated between patriotism and disaffection throughout his life, I'm still shocked by these moments of adoration for the war machine.
I knew going into this that I probably wouldn't like it, but I expected to see more of Steinbeck's character. This is a 185-page pamphlet about the U.S. Air Force. Often, sentences and ideas are repeated over and over again (a young man may enter the Air Force wanting to be a pilot or a navigator or a bombardier or a gunner or a radio operator or an engineer, but the Air Force will give him tests that will determine which position he is best suited for. Also, he may enter the Air Force wanting to be a pilot or a navigator or a bombardier...)
I searched these pages for some semblance of heart. There isn't any. It's dry. The only place where there's any style whatsoever (and it's light), is in the final few paragraphs, a sad attempt to stir some sense of pride in the men heading out to battle.
If you, like me, needed to read everything Steinbeck read, Bombs Away is unavoidable. For anyone else, I strongly suggest not giving it another thought.
September 12, 2018
American Air Force propaganda ... which I get in the context of when it was written and to some extent this probably reflects a lot of nationalist pride/propaganda of the time.
What this book did do is really clarify what it is that a lot (sorry) Americans do which just gets under the skin of other nations. It's a stereotype, I know ... and not every American does it. (Just using the word Americans to describe yourselves as citizens of the United States when there are more countries in the Americas kind of points to what I'm about to say ...). Here goes. I'm Canadian and while I love Canada and would like to say it's the best country in the world, I think most Canadians try to recognize that although we love our country fiercely, so do other nationalities. And in doing so, when we describe anything national, be it military/health care/national parks, I feel like it's usually said, "Some of the best in the world" vs. Steinbeck's (and a lot of American sentiment) " ... it is this ability of Americans, exemplified in their team sports of being both individuals and units in a group at the same time, which makes them both the finest team players and finest flyers in the world." Right. Because no other countries play team sports, and if they do, they aren't good at it or don't get the idea of team. Sigh. This is one example of more than I care to count through out the book. I think national pride is important but there is an unfortunate stereotype to Americans who don't (or can't) acknowledge that just maybe there might be some people out there better at something.
What this book did do is really clarify what it is that a lot (sorry) Americans do which just gets under the skin of other nations. It's a stereotype, I know ... and not every American does it. (Just using the word Americans to describe yourselves as citizens of the United States when there are more countries in the Americas kind of points to what I'm about to say ...). Here goes. I'm Canadian and while I love Canada and would like to say it's the best country in the world, I think most Canadians try to recognize that although we love our country fiercely, so do other nationalities. And in doing so, when we describe anything national, be it military/health care/national parks, I feel like it's usually said, "Some of the best in the world" vs. Steinbeck's (and a lot of American sentiment) " ... it is this ability of Americans, exemplified in their team sports of being both individuals and units in a group at the same time, which makes them both the finest team players and finest flyers in the world." Right. Because no other countries play team sports, and if they do, they aren't good at it or don't get the idea of team. Sigh. This is one example of more than I care to count through out the book. I think national pride is important but there is an unfortunate stereotype to Americans who don't (or can't) acknowledge that just maybe there might be some people out there better at something.
January 16, 2019
This short but impactful book has received rather mixed reviews, in part because of its admittedly somewhat propagandistic nature, but it's an insightful look into one small facet of the war machine crafted by the US during the Second World War, which did nothing less than save the world. If that in itself sounds somewhat propagandistic and excessively laudatory, bear in mind that many of the other accounts of the war I have spent time reading include the works, or perhaps rather, indictments, of authors and survivors such as Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. This is another look at that critical period in history, and how the US viewed its role at the time, through one of the most well-known authors of the era, John Steinbeck. This account almost seems the memoir of what we would today call an imbedded journalist, who experienced a behind-the-scenes view of the training of a bomber crew, specifically that of the B-17s and B-24s, which operated in both the European and Pacific theaters. I think the most valuable aspect of it is the personal accounts of some of the persons highlighted in their respective roles, such as the navigator, pilot, bombardier, and the gunners. Not only does it provide some detail of military operations, but it also describes the mentality of many in the US, and their experiences immediately preceding the outbreak of the war, coming out of the Great Depression. It's definitely a worthwhile read, if viewed through the lens of both its purpose (which is reasonably still somewhat debated) and the general attitude of the day.
May 31, 2023
I picked this book up because I am interested in reading about WWII, especially aircraft. I was surprised who wrote this book. Steinbeck wrote this in 1942 for the US Government. It was intended to encourage young men to sign to up fly bombers in the war. Sometimes cited as propaganda, it could also be seen as a patriotic gesture by a famous American who during a national crisis wished to do his part using the wonderful skill he possessed, writing. Steinbeck traveled with a bomber training unit carefully recording the many lessons the men went through to learn their trade on a B-17 or B-24 bomber. He wrote a chapter on each crew position: navigator, crew engineer, pilot, bombardier, radio engineer, aerial gunner. He also wrote chapters on the B-17 and its role in warfare plus a chapter on how the bomber crew must work as a team. There are also included, many photographs of training scenes. This is not a novel and was not intended to be a novel. One insightful piece that Steinbeck mentioned was that even as he was writing this, things in the war were changing so rapidly that some of the information would already be outdated by the time it got to print. He still felt it was important to proceed. A very informative book and Steinbeck's writing style takes something that could have been dry reading and adds the human element. This book probably will not be read by a lot of people but if you're interested in the B-17 bomber like I am there is no better book out there describing the teamwork involved in flying these beautiful planes.
December 17, 2025
Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team is not John Steinbeck at his literary peak, but it is unmistakably Steinbeck, and that alone makes it worth reading. More than anything, the book succeeds as a historical snapshot of America during World War II, when the war was not a distant abstraction but a shared national obsession. Ordinary citizens knew the names of tanks and planes. The Sherman, the P-47 Thunderbolt, and the B-17 Flying Fortress were not trivia; they were symbols of American industry and ingenuity, and the men who operated them were fighting against fascism and tyranny.
This is where Bombs Away truly shines. Steinbeck gives readers a vivid sense of what it meant to be one of those men whose faces appeared in newsreels and newspapers, imagined daily by parents, sweethearts, and wives back home. Through his focus on the bomber crew as a collective (pilot, navigator, bombardier, gunner) Steinbeck captures both the individuality of the men and the democratic ideal of teamwork that defined the Army Air Forces. These were not mythic heroes but recognizable Americans, suddenly entrusted with extraordinary responsibility.
Written as morale-boosting propaganda, the book can feel simplified and occasionally contrived, and it lacks the emotional depth of Steinbeck’s greatest novels. Yet, judged on its own terms, Bombs Away works. It offers insight into how Americans understood themselves during the war and how deeply invested the “common citizen” truly was. As literature, it may be minor Steinbeck, but as history, it remains quietly powerful.
This is where Bombs Away truly shines. Steinbeck gives readers a vivid sense of what it meant to be one of those men whose faces appeared in newsreels and newspapers, imagined daily by parents, sweethearts, and wives back home. Through his focus on the bomber crew as a collective (pilot, navigator, bombardier, gunner) Steinbeck captures both the individuality of the men and the democratic ideal of teamwork that defined the Army Air Forces. These were not mythic heroes but recognizable Americans, suddenly entrusted with extraordinary responsibility.
Written as morale-boosting propaganda, the book can feel simplified and occasionally contrived, and it lacks the emotional depth of Steinbeck’s greatest novels. Yet, judged on its own terms, Bombs Away works. It offers insight into how Americans understood themselves during the war and how deeply invested the “common citizen” truly was. As literature, it may be minor Steinbeck, but as history, it remains quietly powerful.
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