A Higher Call: True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

Four days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly, a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail—a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber in the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.

http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Call-Incredible-Chivalry-War-Torn/dp/0425252868/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377566145&sr=1-1&keywords=a+higher+call

Great Book ...Never new anything about the 8th Air Force....More Americans killed there than all the Marines in World War 2

(47,000-plus casualties with more than 26,000 deaths).

26,000 dead in 44 months of combat over the skies of Western Europe. It's been my great honor to know a couple of men who flew in B-17’s with “The Mighty Eighth’’. One was a pilot another a navigator and one was a ball-turret gunner, arguably THE most hazardous combat station in any theater of operation in all of WW2 for the poor sons of guns who had to man it. Curled up inside that thing there was no way to get out of it or pull the whole thing back up into the plane if it was hit or damaged. It was so tight a space for the guy manning it he couldn't wear a parachute when he climbed into it. All three of these men said the only reason they survived the war was because they were flying in a B-17. This plane could take punishment like no other aircraft in the history of aerial combat and still keep flying. To me the Boeing B-17, “Flying Fortress’’ is the coolest, most aesthetically beautiful looking aircraft ever to take to the air. As luck would have it, on my way to work this afternoon a local airport in Wall Township New Jersey not far from where I live had a B-17 visit it today and for $400 a pop you could take a ride. The thing crossed over the roadway at about a thousand feet and cast a shadow that nearly blotted out the Sun and the sound of those Pratt&Whitney Double Wasp engines made one hell of a roar. A more potent image of righteous American might if ever there was one.

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