DEFEAT OF NAZI GERMANY

Fong chronicles the Allied defeat of the German Luftwaffe during World War II and his own participation in the bombing campaigns.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the author aspired to assist in the war effort; specifically, he longed to join the Flying Tigers, an all-volunteer unit of pilots deployed to China to help defend it from Japanese invasion. In 1943, shortly after Fong graduated from high school in San Francisco, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, though he was disqualified from flight training due to poor eyesight. He instead trained to become a tail gunner, and on the first day of 1945, he landed in Liverpool, England, to join the 735th Bombardment Squadron of the 453rd Bombardment Group. The author was part of a crew flying the B-24 Liberator, running bombing missions designed, among other things, to cripple the German Luftwaffe, which was absolutely necessary for the success of Operation Overlord. In impressive detail, Fong recounts the 22 missions he participated in, including the bombing of Berlin, the “very heart of the Nazi regime.” The author exactingly situates those missions within their historical and military contexts and lucidly depicts their harrowing nature. He also provides a moving personal reflection on his own experience of the war and affectingly depicts the “extreme elation and apprehension” he felt when he flew his first mission a little more than two weeks after his arrival in England. Fong mercifully avoids any melodramatic posturing or histrionic hyperbole—this is an understated work, brimming with scrupulously documented detail. In fact, the true power of the narrative, in addition to its historical rigor, is precisely this journalistic objectivity. While military histories about World War II are not in short supply, this is a marvelously concise and cleareyed account of the bombing campaigns against Germany.

A historically edifying monograph and a fascinating personal memoir.