Shot at and Missed: Recollections of a World War II Bombardier

Based in Italy, the Fifteenth Air Force flew strategic bombing raids over southern Germany, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. Less celebrated than the Eighth Air Force, which flew out of England, the Fifteenth, nevertheless, was pivotal in dismantling the German industrial complex. Myers offers an insider’s view of these missions over southern and central Europe. The reader goes with him into the highly exposed Plexiglas nose of the Flying Fortress, flying with him through the flak-filled skies of Europe and peering with him through his Norden bombsight at Axis targets.

On average, a heavy-bomber crewman survived only sixteen bombing missions. Myers survived his allotted thirty-five missions before being honorably discharged in 1945.