The battle fought on Black Thursday stands high in the history of American fighting men. It will be long remembered, like the immortal struggles of Gettysburg, St. Mihiel and the Argonne, of Midway and the Bulge and Pork Chop Hill. Tens of thousands of our airmen fought in desperate battles in the sky during World War II. From China to the Aleutians, from Australia through the Philippines and across the Southwest Pacific, through the Central Pacific, in Africa and the Mediterranean, and across the length and breadth of Europe, American fliers engaged in combat with the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians.
In all these battles one stands out among all the others for unprecedented fury, for losses suffered, for courage. This was the battle on Black Thursday, Mission 115 of the VIII Bomber Command from bases in England to the savagely defended German city of Schweinfurt. It was a battle in which we suffered unprecedented losses, and a battle that we cannot in honesty remember as having produced the results we had hoped for, or that hurt the enemy’s war effort as much as we had believed.
Chapter I — BOLERO, SICKLE, CBO
Chapter V — NOTES SELECTED AT RANDOM
Chapter VII — “A BRIGHT GREEN FLARE.”
Chapter IX — “YOU WORK UP THERE…”
Chapter XI — LINE PLUNGE THROUGH CENTER
Chapter XIII — A QUEEN DIES HARD
Chapter XIV — SCHWEINFURT BELOW
Chapter XV — HOW THE GERMANS FOUGHT
Chapter XVII — THE TRAIN TRAVELER
Chapter XVIII — THE FORTS COME HOME
Chapter XIX — THE BOMBING: EVALUATION
Chapter XX — IN THIS WE FAILED