Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought The Air War Against Nazi Germany by Donald L. Miller is the essential book on the Air Corps bomber crews of 1942 through 1945. Master of the Air will open your eyes to what really happened in those deadly days of World War II.

A harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Munich, Hanover, and Dresden. Fighting at twenty-five thousand feet in thin, freezing air no airmen had encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly business, but also filled with periods of inactivity and anxiety that were followed by short bursts sheer intensity.

Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, had furloughs in London and danced to the music of Glenn Miller's Air Force Band. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers in World War II. In 1943 alone an American bomber crewman stood only a one-in-five chance of surviving his tour of duty. This to me was a revelation and one that must have shadowed my father as he received his wings in October of 1943 and was about to be sent to England for combat duty.

The Eighth Air Force lost more men in the war than the US Marine Corps. The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors. The air bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in early 1945, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.

Strategic bombing did not win the war, but the war could not have been won without it. American air power destroyed the rail facilities and oil refineries that supplied the German war machine. The bombing campaign was a shared enterprise. The British bombed at night while American bombers attacked by day. Daylight bombing was considered suicidal by the British commanders.

Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought The Air War Against Nazi Germany covers the hard facts and truths of the air war over German occupied Europe. My father Lt. Ernest Anders Erickson of the 95th Bomb Group was one of these men who flew bombers and this book opened my eyes in far more crystal clear vision of his extreme experiences.

The more I have learned of his combat flying days, the more I have come to appreciate the extraordinary challenges my father and all the other airmen faced, and the extraordinary courage they demonstrated.