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The United States Eighth Air Force, with RAF Bomber Command, took World War II to Germany when the Allied forces were falling back on every front.
They flew daylight raids against enemy infrastructure, unlike the RAF, and took terrible casualties... but their bravery and sacrifices ultimately laid the groundwork for the successful invasion of Europe and the final defeat of Nazi fascism.
The first newly-created Eighth Air Force generals arrived in the East of England, otherwise known as East Anglia, on February 20, 1942 – just a few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 brought the USA into World War II.
Up to then Britain had fought alone against Nazi tyranny in Europe. It had avoided military ignominy at Dunkirk. Won the aerial Battle of Britain. But The Blitz, the German Luftwaffe’s night-time bombing of non-military targets, had killed 30,000 Londoners and left another 50,000 injured. In North Africa, Britain’s forces had been defeated by Rommel’s desert army. The Red Army had been pushed back to Moscow. On February 15th, 1942, the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese.
The Axis forces – Germany, Italy and Japan – were winning on every front.
The Eighth Air Force began with seven men and no planes that February of 1942. By December 1943 it comprised 185,000 men and 4,000 planes. The industrial might and resource of the Americans would turn the tide.
On the eve of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, there would be a total fleet of 3,000 Flying Fortresses and Liberators, most of them operating from Norfolk and Suffolk in the East of England.
Eighth Air Force Bomb Groups were spread across Suffolk and Norfolk. This is the memorial and museum at Horham.
The American Air Force’s first combat mission was on July 4, 1942. They were determined to go on the Glorious Fourth for symbolic and propaganda reasons. What a message it would send – wanting to help Europe regain its freedom from Nazi tyranny on their own Independence Day. Unfortunately, their planes hadn’t arrived – so they had to borrow RAF bombers.
The bombing campaign of Nazi Germany by the RAF and Eighth Air Force would become the longest battle of World War II.
From these air bases cut out of farmers’ fields, a new kind of warfare was waged. While the RAF’s Bomber Command led night-time missions on civilian targets, revenge for The Blitz, the Eighth Air Force conducted high altitude, strategic bombing, designed to destroy the Nazis’ industrial war machine.
The United States’ Friendly Invasion helped change the region forever – their presence had the biggest landscape and cultural impact of any event since the Norman Conquest, 900 years earlier.
Mechanics had to work quickly on repairs and servicing between combat missions.
Hundreds of miles of concrete runways were created in a mammoth endeavour – a half a mile per day could be laid, an astonishing rate. The East of England became the largest aircraft carrier the world had seen.
The construction of an airbase meant ‘clearing 8 miles of hedgerows and 1,500 trees, excavating 400,000 cubic yards of soil, laying down 10 miles of roads, twenty miles of drains, four miles of sewers. The runways required 175,000 cubic yards of concrete, the buildings four and a half million bricks and 32,000 square yards of tarmac’.
Crew members enjoy a downtime Coca Cola.
They brought with them Coca Cola, chewing gum, peanut butter, the Jitterbug and Swing – and segregation.
Some market towns were for black servicemen only, others had black and white servicemen on alternate days!
Restoring ammunition supplies in an American bomber.
Each bomber had a crew of 10. For every flier there were three ancillaries, from mechanics to nurses and cooks. This meant each base had more than 3000 servicemen, next to sleepy hamlets and villages in rural East of England.
Before the end of the war more than 350,000 Americans transitioned through the East of England as part of The Mighty Eighth Air Force – the largest air army ever created.
Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart is the only Oscar winner to have fought for his country.
Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart was an air base commander, leading his men on many missions: he wouldn’t expect his men to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself. Stewart is still revered – the only Academy Award winner to actively serve his country in war. His first movie back in Hollywood was the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life.
In its first ten months of operation, the Eighth lost 188 heavy bombers and around 1,900 crew, not counting those dead and wounded who returned to England in their planes. Approximately 73 per cent of the combat fliers who had arrived in England in the Summer and Fall of 1942 failed to complete their tour of duty. Fifty-seven per cent were killed or missing in action, another sixteen per cent had been seriously wounded, killed in crashes in England or grounded by serious physical or mental disability.
During their three years in England, the Mighty Eighth suffered the most of any service, over 26,000 fatalities, more than the Marine Corps in the entire Pacific campaign when the Japanese opposition were fighting to the death.
The American Cemetery at Madingley, Cambridge.
The Mighty Eighth Air Force flew more than 1000 missions by the end of the war. Without their sacrifices and bravery, the D-Day invasion that finally led to Nazi defeat would not have been possible.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote in May 1945, ‘In the spring of 1944 the Allied strategic bombers were required for ‘Overlord’ [D-Day], and the weight of attack on Germany itself was inevitably reduced. For our air superiority, which by the end of 1944 was to become air supremacy, full tribute must be paid to the U.S Eighth Air Force. Now we were masters in the air.’
