Donald L. Miller (1) (1944–)

Masters of the Air is an well-deserved classic of military history, focusing on the Eighth Air Force, the United States strategic bomber arm that was the first American unit to bring the war to Nazi Germany, and which pioneered the tactics and techniques of strategic bombing.

By all reason, the strategic air campaign should not have worked. Army Air Corps doctrine in the late 30s was built around three major pillars: the heavily armed B-17 Flying Fortress was 'self-escorting' and could fend show more off hostile fighters; the gyroscopic Norden bombsite could hit pinpoint targets with accuracy; and precision attacks on 'vital centers' of industry could cripple an enemy military without the need for battles of attrition. All three of these assumptions would be proven wrong in the skies over German, with deadly consequences for the men who had been trained and equipped on them.

The cloudless skies of test ranges over the American southwest were nothing like the weather over England and Germany. Men froze in the stratospheric slipstream, and bombers were lost in rapidly changing weather conditions. Flak and fighters ripped through the B-17 and B-24s, inflicting proportional casualties as high as any duty in the war, matched only by submarine crews. Nazi industry proved surprisingly resilient. Yet even if every specific of pre-war doctrine was wrong, the bombers succeeded in their most important tasks. Defense against bombers escorted by P-51s in the months leading up to Overlord deciminated the Luftwaffe, and the landings were unopposed from the air. The transport and oil campaigns feel short of paralyzing the Nazi war machine, but delay and friction impeded the panzers, and gave the Normandy beachhead time to stabilize and expand. And the thousands of heavy guns shooting at the sky, and not T-34s on the steppes, had some helpful effect on the Eastern Front.

Miller was inspired to write this book in part by his friendship with Lt. Col. Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal of the "Bloody 100th" Bombardment Wing, and this book shines in depicting the human side of the Eighth. It was a whole new kind of warfare. Crews would take off in English fog, endure hours of torment over Europe, return, and potentially be in London with a pretty girl by evening. War at the limits of technology was intensely dangerous. The first teams, dispatched in 1943, had a one in five chance of completing the required 25 missions. Frostbite, flak, and fighters were the three terrors of this aerial front. Showcase raids, like Schweinfurt–Regensburg and Ploesti, caused terrible losses for temporary results. The courage that it took to fly straight and level, holding formation through the worst, was like something out of Napoleonic warfare, standing in ranks to take fire. Bomber crews were teams as tightly knit as any on Earth. Along with the flying, there are stories about leaves around England, the traditions of the bases, and the devotion of the men to each other.

But the mission was murder. Thousands of the bomber boys died in combat, and many more were grievously wounded, or held captive in Nazi POW camps (this book does not neglect the POW perspective). And point military targets soon shifted to area targets like railyards and factories in German cities, and in the last months of the war 'morale bombings' to break the will of the German people, a campaign of terror through mass civilian death. Miller tries to draw a distinction between the goals of the Eight Air Force and the RAF's city-busting campaigns under "Bomber" Harris, but I'm not sure the Brits deserve that characterization. Area bombing against civilians is a war crime, and we can recognize that without the slide into the fallacy that there's no difference between the air campaign and the Holocaust.

In the end, strategic bombing failed in its goal of shorter, cleaner wars. Attrition moved from the trenches to the skies. But the men who flew those missions were a rare breed. There are damn few of them left. Both my grandfathers served in WW2, one in the Pacific, and one was never deployed. I'm a member of the Commemorative Air Force, which keeps a B-17, Sentimental Journey, flying. This book has deepened my appreciation of airpower, the mission, and especially the men. show less

A magisterial and engrossing history of Chicago up to the end of the 19th century. Really told in a tangled web of biographies, it doesn't seem like a 550 page book and you really don't want it to end. Sadly it does, and that is my chief complaint.

The theme here is the unstoppable drive of those who believed in Chicago from Marquette and Joliet right through to George Pullman, Marshall Field, and Daniel Burnham, and the inevitable malcontents and disillusioned who found that dream and show more reality harsh, uncompromising, misguided, and/or insufficient.

That the book ends with the city and all of its primary legends largely still at the height of their powers is an interesting choice--knowing a bit more about the next thirty years, it is easy to see why, but one wishes it kept on. If you like the 19th century, biographical vignette, and Chicago, you will love this book. show less

I read the subtitle of this book and assumed it was a collection of war stories from 8th Air Force crewmen. I'm not a huge fan of oral history but decided to give it a shot anyway. Wow was I pleasantly surprised. It is much, much more than an oral history. MASTERS OF THE AIR examines the entire experience of the 8th AF from POWs to its portrayal in movies and books to race relations to the effect of the American air bases on the social fabric of the English countryside to the whole question show more of the viability of strategic bombardment. Miller is incredibly well read on a vast amount of literature relating to the air campaign over Europe and draws on many of these sources to produce a rich first-rate history. There is something in MASTERS for any fan of history.

I particularly enjoyed his handling of the sticky question of whether strategic bombing was a success. From the point of view of the pre-war bomber barons the answer is "no". Heavy bombers alone were not able to defeat Germany. But the more important question is whether the damage they did inflict was worth the effort put forth and the answer to that is a resounding "yes".

Miller does a fine job though of making clear that the strategic bombing was not the sole mission of the 8th. Throughout late 1943 and early 1944 the main mission of the 8th was too break the Luftwaffe fighter force by hitting targets the Jagdwaffe would be forced to defend and then shooting down the German fighters. Destruction of the Luftwaffe was a pre-requisite for Operation Overlord and the 8th was the only force able to carry it out. German fighters routinely avoided combat with Allied fighters- it took attacks on key targets by bombers to bring them out where American escorts could get them.

Coincidently this campaign against German airpower also paved the way for later campaigns against oil and transportation targets in Germany. This is where strategic bombing came into it's own. It was never able to win the war alone but it severely curtailed German production efforts in the last months of the war and shortened the war by months.

I'm only touching the surface of what MASTERS offers. If you have any interest in the air war over Europe or the 8th Air Force I strongly recommend this book. It is sure to be the standard history of the 8th show less

I will always love a book that has so much new to tell me about cities. And this book tells me so much about New York that I didn't know before, even if, at the end of the day, I have a few quibbles with the sub-title. Did Jazz Age Manhattan give birth to Modern America? I'm not sure this is true. I'm not even sure I understand what is "Modern America." Is modern America defined by what goes on down on Wall Street or Midtown? Or Silicon Valley. if one stopped the clock at December 31, 1999, show more then maybe I would agree with the author. But modern America today is so much defined by the Puritan heritage, the religious revivial of 19th century America, by the Gilded Age, by racism, slavery, and not a little of revolutionary America. The southwest and increasingly more the remainder of America is defined by Hispanic California before the American expansion west and south. Donald Miller has brought together for me a lot of great research about Prohibition New York and for sure Prohibition had a tremendous impact on how people sought entertainment in the "Roaring Twenties," a sobriquet he never uses. Hoodlums mingled with producers and athletes, politicians and real estate developers. Tamany-controlled New York politics certainly affected who got elected, what got built and often what legislation got passed. I adored the sections on the beauty mavens of midtown, including Helena Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden, Bergdorff & Goodman, and the Saks family. And I learned much about real estate developers, publishers, theatre and radio producers, It is a rich volume. I enjoyed it very much. show less