Mission to Berlin

June 27, 2011
Having authored a multitude of books and articles on the Air Force and Air warfare, Dorr should be the best person to illuminate the plight of the men who flew over Berlin on February 3, 1945. During the Berlin mission the Eighth Air Force launched 2,385 combat aircrafts from East Anglia targeting "every subway station and every telephone pole in the city." Ostensibly, this is the story of four of the men who flew in those planes, specifically the "Flying Fortress" B-17, one of the most popular bombers of the European theatre. Those four men and their planes appear and reappear infrequently in the narrative. The book flits back and forth between their tales and those of a few hundred others while also intermingling stories of other flyers and other bombing runs. Pilots and dedicated fans of WWII aircraft will best appreciate this book and its details of the engines, guns, construction, and durability of the fighters and bombers that leveled Germany. At its core, this is a book about planes, not about men.