Screaming Eagle: Memoirs of A B-17 Group Commander

by Dale O. Smith

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0912697997
• ISBN13: 9780912697994
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Major General Smith's personal account of one arm of the air war over Europe

Major General Smith organized and led major bombing missions over Europe during World War II. His planes launched from their bases in England and ranged over Europe, all the way to Berlin. He ordered and saw many things and after the air war began winding down in Europe, he was transferred back to the Pentagon where he was engaged in staff work. His perspective on the war is not much different from others who have put forward their stories of being involved in the strategic bombing of Axis targets. Most of the descriptions are about planning and tactics, what needed to be done to make the probability of a successful attack and return as high as possible. Smith was certainly a brave and dedicated soldier, he volunteered for dangerous missions when it was not necessary. I cannot say that this book adds any general information about the air war over Europe that is not found elsewhere, although his personal perspective on the 384th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force provides a unique perspective. Those men risked their lives in so many ways, keeping the military pressure on Germany when that was the only way in which it could be done. They were talented, brave and dedicated, doing more than their share to win the war.

Wartime memories

Dale told me that keeping diaries during the war was strictly prohibited....so he reconstructed the air battles over Germany years later. As a bomb group leader, his descriptions of losing planes and their crews brings the incredible air war effort into vivid detail. As a commander who was responsible for sending men on dangerous missions, he had to have a steel resolve about the rightness of the war, his country and his God. This is a real narrative which includes insight into his troubled family life--an unwelcome by-product of fighting a war half a world away.