The day that conventional weapons almost equaled that of nuclear weapons.
The USAAF suffered the greatest percentile casualty rate of any US service in WWII.
BZ
History: the B-17 and the Bloody 100th Bomb Group
Bloviating Zeppelin
Right thinking from a Left brain.
The courage of those bomber crews is almost unbelievable.
When men were men. Great watch. I am a big WWII history buff and have read tons of books on the subject. But there were just so many facets to the war, that you can not learn about all of it.
In many of my books, the ground troops were somewhat jealous of the “flyboys” and how they got to sleep in a bed every night, and did not know what a foxhole was. But I bet after learning the real story and the statistics, a new respect was given.
My grandfather served in WWII and was a waist gunner and had just been accepted to flight school to become a pilot and was to report on a Monday…this was some time in 1944. That Saturday before he was to report to flight school, he participated in a training exercise where his plane crashed into the water and he broke his back. He was the only survivor, as the other guys died, either killed on impact or drowned. He was discharged due to his injuries and against his will. Needless to say, he was upset over this as he had wanted very badly to become a pilot since he was a little boy. Anyway, he was discharged and sent home early in 1945, months before the war ended. My father was born nine months later, in Oct 1945.
I wonder, had my grandfather not been hurt, would I be here. Had he not been in that crash and injured, what would have happened? Obviously my father would not have been born on October 45. Maybe grandpa would have survived the war. Maybe some later version of my father would have been born years later. Who knows how things would have happened.
And I am sure you don’t want to hear of my other grandfather who served in the Pacific theater and came within inches of being killed.
I guess the whole butterfly flapping his wings applies here.