Mission to Berlin

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NONFICTION 

Terror at 26,000 feet

MISSION TO BERLIN 
The American Airmen Who Struck the Heart of Hitler’s Reich 
By Robert F. Dorr
336 pp. Zenith Press

Reviewed by Gary Presley

The U.S. Army Air Corps lost nearly 23,000 aircraft in combat in World War II. More than 52,000 men died while on missions in those aircraft. 

Losses at the beginning of the strategic bombing campaign were horrendous. The raids over Schweinfurt and Regensburg in August 1943 saw 315 bombers make it to their targets; 60 were lost. In October, there was another strike on Schweinfurt, and 222 of 296 B-17s dispatched made it to the target; 60 were lost. Each bomber carried a ten-man crew.

Author Robert Dorr covers one mission in that bloody air war over Europe. The Eighth Air Forces bombers took off on February 3rd, 1945, more than 1,000 of them, all dispatched to target the Nazi capital of Berlin, Germany. Dorr has undertaken extensive research, and he weaves the story from historical records and interviews with surviving airmen whose stories comprise the bulk of this fine history. 

The air war over Europe, at least the strategic bombing, carries historical context that still sparks debate. Some revisionists believe it was relatively ineffective. Other doubters are especially disturbed by the British government targeting civilians. That policy sprang from the mind of Royal Air Force Marshal Arthur T. Harris, known as “Bomber Harris.” The commandant of the U.S. Army Air Corps, General Harold H. “Hap” Arnold, preferred to send his bombers to so-called strategic targets, installations like petroleum refineries and munition factories. The man in charge of strategic bombing in Europe, Lt. General Carl “Tooey” Spatz, agreed. One observer wrote, “Before 1945, Spatz tried whenever possible to avoid killing German civilians. Harris killed them deliberately and with equanimity.” 

As noted, U.S. policy changed as the war wore on, the mission to Berlin being but one example, and the men whose stories are told in Mission seem to have accepted targeting city centers, most feeling it would shorten the war. The aiming point for this mission: a “building in the center of the city” of Berlin, with bombs being loosed from 26,000 feet. 

Early in the war, 1942-43, the leaders of the air was crashed into Napoleon the Great’s famous dictum: “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” U.S. generals thought the British wasteful in pursuing night-time bombing, but early raids by the Americans proved one treasured Yankee thesis thoroughly wrong. Precision daylight bombing by heavily armed bombers was no easier and no more effective. No matter the number of machine guns on a bomber, the bombers still needed fighter plane escort. Bombing from higher altitudes to avoid flak revealed inadequacies in equipment. Heated flight suits and oxygen masks malfunctioned, for example. But the air crews flew on, even with odds of surviving those early 25 mission tours being only even at best. By the time of the 1945 Berlin mission, Nazi resistance in the air was fading, although flak barrages remained deadly. Late in the war, many gunners flew entire missions without seeing an enemy fighter. 

Dorr follows specific air crew and specific bombers through the mission he is chronicling. The men have names and hometowns, and the bombers are named too: Purty Chili, Fancy Nancy, Blue Grass Girl. He takes the reader through wake-up in the early morning hours, breakfast, briefings, and out to the flight line. The author also swings over to the fighter squadrons that were to escort the thousand plane raid, a stream of bombers and fighters than extended to a length of more than ninety miles. 

The stories of courage and sacrifice never seem to end. A bombardier is mortally wounded by a nearby flak burst, one arm almost severed, but he crawls back to his station and drops his bombs on target before succumbing to his wounds. A pilot of a P-51 Mustang escorting the bombers is shot out of the sky, but he makes a skilled emergency landing near a town, climbs out of the wreckage and waves to his wingman. He’s never heard from again, apparently killed by a mob of German civilians. A second lieutenant on his second bomber mission bails out after his B-24 is hit by flak, survives seven days so cold his feet freeze before he's captured by a German patrol. Next he is brutally beaten by a German officer and then imprisoned in a camp where 53 of 309 Americans die of starvation before liberation. The young pilot spends only two months as a POW, and his weight drops from 164 to 130 pounds. 

Mission to Berlin encompasses seventeen chapters and four appendices, including notes, bibliography, and index. Dorr’s effort is also amply illustrated with historical photographs. The chapters cover the strike chronologically, beginning with Chapter One, “Wake Up” through Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen, “Wheels Down” and “Wrap Up.”

The end-of-book material is extraordinarily interesting. “The Bomber Stream” identifies groups, squadrons, and sometimes pilots, with special notes on aircraft shot down and casualty numbers. There is more fascinating material in “What Happened to Them,” which gives one paragraph biographies of some men featured in the text. Many stayed in the service and fought over Korea and Vietnam. One became an architect, another had a career with Firestone, and one became part of the prosecution team at Nuremberg. 

Countless books have been devoted to the men and women of the “Greatest Generation,” but no one can say, understanding the critical period of history encompassed by the Great Depression and World War II, that one more book is unnecessary. This book deserves a place in the library of any reader who values history. 

Dorr served in the post-war Air Force, had a 25-year career in the diplomatic service, and is “the author of seventy books and thousands of magazine articles and newspaper columns about the Air Force and air warfare.” 

Robert F. Dorr has served history with Mission to Berlin.