Above the Reich: Deadly Dogfights, Blistering Bombing Raids, and Other War Stories from the Greatest American Air Heroes of World War I

Colin Heaton and Anne-Marie Lewis

Sensational eyewitness accounts from the most heroic and legendary American aviators of World War II, never before published as a book.They are voices lost to time. Beginning in the late 1970s, five veteran airmen sat for private interviews. Decades after the guns fell silent, they recounted in vivid detail the most dangerous missions that made the difference in the war. Ed Haydon dueled with the deadliest of German aces-and shot him out of the sky. Robert Johnson racked up 27 kills in his P-47 Thunderbolt, but nearly lost his life when his plane was shot to ribbons and his guns jammed. Cigar-chomping Curtis LeMay was the Air Corps general who devised the bomber tactics that pummeled Germany's war machine. Robin Olds was a West Point football hero who became one of the most dogged, aggressive fighter pilots in the European Theater, relentlessly pursuing Germans in his P-38 Lightning. And Jimmy Doolittle became the most celebrated American airman of the war-maybe even of all time-after he led the audacious raid to bomb Tokyo. Today these heroes are long gone, but now, in this incredible volume, they tell their stories in their own words.Story Locale: WWII Europe

FAMOUS NAMES: Jimmy Doolittle, Curtis LeMay, and Robin Olds are three of the most well-known American war heroes, whose eyewitness testimonies about aerial combat will appeal to WWII readers.A RARE COLLECTION: The interviews, edited into gripping, seamless narratives, are published here in full for the first time.A REMARKABLE ORAL HISTORY: Historian Colin Heaton personally conducted these interviews from the 1970s until the early 2000s, sometimes cold-calling a famous war hero via a number he found in the phone book. He recorded reams of audio tape, filled with each man's own descriptions and recollections of his life at war, and the path that took him there. (Scotch and cigars helped.) The result is a singular volume that cannot be imitated.