U.S. EIGHTH AIR FORCE ACTIVATED

Savannah, Georgia · January 28, 1942

On this date in 1942 the fledgling U.S. Eighth Air Force was activated at Savan­nah Air Force Base in Georgia. Second-in-com­mand Brig. Gen. Ira Eaker was sent to Eng­land to form and orga­nize its bomber com­mand, the VIII Bomber Com­mand. An advanced detach­ment was estab­lished at RAF Bomber Com­mand Head­quarters in South­east England. For nearly 2 years Eaker’s name was syn­on­y­mous with the Eighth Air Force. He became the arch­i­tect of a stra­tegic bombing force that ulti­mately num­bered 40 groups of 60 heavy bombers each, sup­ported by a sub­or­dinate fighter command of 1,500 air­craft, the VIII Fighter Command.

The Eighth Air Force oper­ated over Northern Europe, carrying out day­light “pre­ci­sion” bombings of enemy targets in occupied France and the Low Countries and in Nazi Germany. Regu­lar com­bat opera­tions by VIII Bomber Com­mand began on August 17, 1942, when 12 B‑17 Flying For­tresses attacked rail­road yards at Rouen in North­western France, roughly 40 miles/­64 km inland from the English Chan­nel. In late Febru­ary 1944 VIII Bomber Com­mand and Ninth Air Force were brought under con­trol of a cen­tral­ized head­quarters. That same week, “Big Week” (Febru­ary 20–25, 1944), over 1,000 B‑17s and B‑24 Lib­er­ators and over 800 fighters of the Eighth Air Force tar­geted the German air­craft indus­try. Their raids in Febru­ary and March 1944 caused so much damage that the Germans were com­pelled to disperse air­craft manufacturing eastward, to safer parts of the Reich.

Less than a week after “Big Week,” the Eighth Air Force sent over 700 heavy bombers, accom­pa­nied by 800 escort fighters, to hit targets in Berlin, dropping the first American bombs on Adolf Hitler’s capital.

Begin­ning on May 13, 1944, the Eighth Air Force began striking at oil industry tar­gets when 9,000 bombers, escorted by almost 9,000 fighters, pounded targets in the greater Leip­zig area (Eastern Germany) and in Nazi-occupied Czecho­slo­va­kia. (The Fif­teenth Air Force, based briefly in North Africa, then in Italy, hit oil industry facil­i­ties in Nazi-occupied Yugo­sla­via, Roma­nia, and North­eastern Italy.) By the end of 1944 only 3 out of 91 refin­eries in the Reich were still func­tioning nor­mally, 29 were partially func­tional, and the remain­der were com­pletely destroyed. All these raids, how­ever, exacted an enormous price. Half of the USAAF’s casual­ties in World War II were suf­fered by the Eighth Air Force, which counted over 47,000 casu­al­ties, with more than 26,000 dead, from among the 350,000 Americans who served in the Eighth Air Force.

U.S. Eighth Air Force Heavy Bombers and Fighter Escorts

Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress in flightConsolidated B-24D Liberators in flight formation

Left: Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress in flight. A total of 12,731 Flying For­tresses were built between 1935 and 1945. B‑17s flew with the U.S., British, and Soviet air forces. The German Luft­waffe even flew a dozen captured ones. B‑17s were armed with 13 .50 caliber/­12.7 mm M2 Browning machine guns in 8 posi­tions. Depending on the dis­tance of the mission, a B‑17 could carry between 4,000 and 8,000 lb/­1.8 and 3.6 metric tons of bombs. More bombs were dropped by B‑17s than by any other U.S. aircraft in World War II. Of the 1.5 mil­lion metric tons of bombs dropped on Nazi Germany and its occupied terri­tories by U.S. aircraft, 640,000 tons were dropped from B‑17s.

Right: Consolidated B-24D Liberators of the 93rd Bomb Group in flight for­ma­tion. A total of 18,482 B‑24 Liberators were built by Septem­ber 1945. The B‑24 was armed with ten .50 caliber/­12.7 mm M2 Browning machine guns in 4 turrets and 2 waist posi­tions. Depending on the dis­tance of the mis­sion, the B‑24 could carry between 5,000 and 8,000 lb/­2.5 and 3.6 metric tons of bombs. It was faster, had longer range, and could carry a ton more bombs than the B‑17, but Libe­rators formed only about one‑third of the heavy bomber strength of the U.S. Eighth Air Force. Flying from bases in England, thou­sands of B‑24s dropped hundreds of thou­sands of tons of high-explo­sive and incen­diary bombs on German mili­tary and indus­trial targets. Liber­ators were also credited in full or in part with 93 U‑boat sinkings.

Republic P-47 ThunderboltNorth American P-51 Mustang

Left: The first U.S. fighter plane that would be used most exten­sively over the skies of Europe was the Republic P‑47 Thunder­bolt in 1943. Nick­named “the Jug” because of its profile to a milk bottle of the time, it was joined in the sky in 1944 by the North Amer­i­can P‑51 Mustang. Republic built 15,660 P‑47 Thunder­bolts. The fighter was heavily armed with 8 .50 caliber/­12.7 mm machine guns, 4 per wing. Powered by a Pratt & Whitney R‑2800 Double Wasp engine, it was very effec­tive as a short-to-medium range escort fighter in high-alti­tude air-to-air combat. The P‑47s of the 56th Fighter Group had more air-to-air kills than any other fighter group in the Eighth Air Force and recorded the second-highest number of air-to-air kills of any USAAF fighter group. The 56th also claimed 311 enemy fighters destroyed on the ground.

Right: “The Bottisham Four,” a famous photo showing 4 U.S. Army Air Forces North Amer­i­can P‑51 Mustang fighters from the 375th Fighter Squadron, 361st Fighter Group, from RAF Bottis­ham, Cambridge­shire, in flight on July 26, 1944. North Amer­ican built more than 15,000 of these P‑51s. Powered by a Packard V‑1650‑7 liquid-cooled super­charged V‑12, 1,490‑hp engine (a license-built version of the British Rolls-Royce Merlin 66 engine), the P‑51 was armed with 6 .50 caliber/­12.7 mm machine guns, bombs, and rockets. Con­ceived orig­i­nally as a dive bomber, the P‑51 Mustang was perhaps the finest Amer­ican fighter plane of World War II. With an external drop tank attached to its belly, it became a long-range fighter escort. The Royal Air Force also flew squa­drons of P‑51 long-range fighters, which along with their iconic Super­marine Spit­fires provided escort for Eighth Air Force bomber forma­tions over Europe. As many as 1,000 fighters accompanied up­wards of 2,000 4‑engine bombers on a single mission to multiple targets in the last year of the war.

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