8th Air Force Bombing Missions August 17, 1942-March 31, 1943

[James S.]

Does anyone know where one may find information on these early 8th Air Force bombing missions, be it mission and/or crew reports, book or books that focus on the early missions, first hand accounts, etc. I am very interested in the early missions, but not having a lot of luck. I do have some unit histories on most of the units.

Thanks,
James

[edwest2]

Hi,

A few suggestions:

8th Air Force: American Heavy Bomber Groups in England 1942-1945 by Grégory Pons

The Mighty Eighth: A History of the Units, Men and Machines of the US 8th Air Force by Roger A. Freeman

The following book is currently unavailable but I include it on the off chance you can find it through a used bookseller.
Losses of the US 8th and 9th Air Forces: Aircraft and Men June 1942-December 1943 by Stanley D. Bishop

[James S.]

Originally Posted by edwest2

Hi,

A few suggestions:

8th Air Force: American Heavy Bomber Groups in England 1942-1945 by Grégory Pons

The Mighty Eighth: A History of the Units, Men and Machines of the US 8th Air Force by Roger A. Freeman

The following book is currently unavailable but I include it on the off chance you can find it through a used bookseller.
Losses of the US 8th and 9th Air Forces: Aircraft and Men June 1942-December 1943 by Stanley D. Bishop

Thank you, Ed. I have the Freeman book Will have to check out the Pons book and the one by Bishop.

[AMC]

Originally Posted by edwest2

Hi,


A few suggestions:

8th Air Force: American Heavy Bomber Groups in England 1942-1945 by Grégory Pons

The Mighty Eighth: A History of the Units, Men and Machines of the US 8th Air Force by Roger A. Freeman

The following book is currently unavailable but I include it on the off chance you can find it through a used bookseller.
Losses of the US 8th and 9th Air Forces: Aircraft and Men June 1942-December 1943 by Stanley D. Bishop

I have the three books, and they are fine books certainly, but treat their subject mostly in a general sort of way.
To really get more on the missions concerned one really would have to gather which Groups were involved, and get the books covering same. I would have many of these books but it would take so much time and work, I can only wish you luck in your endeavours...

[James S.]

Originally Posted by AMC

I have the three books, and they are fine books certainly, but treat their subject mostly in a general sort of way.
To really get more on the missions concerned one really would have to gather which Groups were involved, and get the books covering same. I would have many of these books but it would take so much time and work, I can only wish you luck in your endeavours...

Exactly. I have many unit histories, and like you said, it would take a lot of time and work to work through each of them.

Is there a website where one may find mission reports, etc or anything from some of the early B-17 & B-24 Groups? I would love to do comprehensive research on the first 6-8 months of the 8th's bombing missions.

[Frank Olynyk]

James,

As Shakespeare said, Get thee to an Archivery.

Everybody likes to think they can find all the information they want on the Internet. They have no idea how much paper is held by USAF Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama; and in addition, just in your area of interest, at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, in Record Group 18.

The WW2 material at Maxwell was microfilmed many years ago, and is currently slowly being copied over to PDFs. You may be able to make arrangements to go there to look at the originals, or the microfilms (I don't know how easy it is for a researcher unknown to them to get on base). You can also use http://airforcehistoryindex.org/ to do a search of their holdings as of 2001. I never found that easy to use, so read the FAQs for how to obtain a free copy of their index for your computer.

For the National Archives, go to https://catalog.archives.gov/advancedsearch and put in a Group number in the Search Term field (xxx Fighter Group, or Bomb Group, or Bombardment Group). Put 18 in the Record Group field; and select Textual Materials in the Type of Archival Materials field. Click Search at the bottom, and wait. Their servers are slow. The College Park website itself is https://www.archives.gov/college-park

If you go to College Park you can copy documents by bringing a flat-bed scanner (never a sheet-fed scanner), or a digital camera, or the camera in your phone. They have camera stands for a camera or a phone, which you can borrow.

Enjoy!

Frank.

[James S.]

Frank, thank you very much. You have been most helpful.

James

[SteveR]

I have:

The Mighty Eighth

The Mighty Eighth War Manual

The Mighty Eighth War Diary

Three different books, all by Roger A Freeman.

[edwest2]

To James S.

Perhaps you can provide some specific examples of what you are looking for. Just a missions list would not be very useful.

[James S.]

Originally Posted by edwest2

To James S.


Perhaps you can provide some specific examples of what you are looking for. Just a missions list would not be very useful.

I have a list of the missions and most of the books plus unit histories, looking for mission reports, etc. as I would like to make a comprehensive account/accounts of the early bombing missions flown by a handful of groups in the 8th. Seems like there is comprehensive detail about the 8th's bombing missions , say from the summer of 1943 and onward. Kinda like now where you are seeing a lot, so to speak, about the first year of the war in the Pacific, not counting the navy, about the U.S. and Australians fighting the Japanese in New Guinea in the air, if that makes sense.

James