Life in the 8th Air Force

Sunset at RAF Kimbolton in March 1944 features two B-17Fs belonging to the 379th Bomb Group. The 379th was considered one of crack units of the 8th Air Force, receiving two Presidential Unit Citations as well as leading the entire 8th Air Force in bombing accuracy while flying 330 sorties during the war.  

When we think of the 8^th Air Force and its contribution to the victory in World War II, we are naturally drawn to the dramatic stories of aerial combat that engulfed the continent of Europe from 1942-1945. The sacrifices of these men who flew into the cold blue against the best the Luftwaffe could throw at them day after day played a critical role in weakening Nazi Germany, and that story has been well told in both popular literature as well as movies such as Twelve O’clock High, Memphis Belle, and the new series Masters of the Air. Their stories ring with the terror of combat, the biting and deadly cold, of perseverance in the face of mechanical failures, flak, and German fighter planes to complete their mission of reducing German industry to rubble.

But when we look at the 8^th Air Force, one quickly learns that the flyers comprised but a small part of the vast organization that existed with the mission of putting bombs on German targets. And that the missions themselves comprised but a small portion of the men’s total army experience. Combat itself seems almost an aberration from the collective experience these men shared of life on an army air force base. We often hear the stories of what aerial combat was like, but rarely do we hear about the wartime experiences of these men away from combat, let alone from the ground support personnel who made those dramatic bombing missions possible. 

The story of life in the 8^th Air Force during World War II thus breaks down into two very separate experiences: that of the “flyboys,” who flew those dangerous missions and that of the “paddlefeet,” the nickname the flyers gave to the mechanics, technicians, sheet metal workers, parachute riggers, weather men, radio operators, photo interpreters, cooks, medics, and dozens of other critical support personnel that made those missions possible.

Ground crewmen of the 384th Bomb Group sit sweating out a mission amongst the mud of what became known as Grafton "Undermud," also known as Grafton Underwood. Eddie Picardo of the 44th Bomb Group remembered that "everybody who wasn't on duty including the civilians who worked on the base would rush to the field either by foot or bicycle to welcome the bombers back in. First you would listen for the roar of the engines then after you began to see them you started counting." Combat losses struck hard at everyone in the group, the ground crew feeling a deep personal responsibility for their ships and the crews who flew them.

          This book aims to synthesize these two very different wartime experiences into a cohesive whole to present a balanced portrait of life in the 8^th Air Force during World War II. What was it like living on an army air force base during the war? How were the bases constructed, laid out, and operated? How did the ground support personnel experience the war? What was it like back at the base ‘sweating it out’ while the mission was underway? What was it like being awake night after night, repairing damaged aircraft or patching together fractured men? How did the men live day after day in the barracks? What did they eat, what type of music did they listen to, and how did they deal with the loneliness of being away from home?

          How did these men find themselves in the Army Air Forces? What type of training did they receive, and what types of equipment did they operate? How did the men adjust to living in wartime England with its different customs and social mores? What was it like to go on a 48-hour pass in London? Why was alcohol and drug use so widespread yet so little discussed? How did our airmen interact with British women both on and off base? And how did these men grow such strong bonds of comradeship that held together for decades after the war? In seeking the answers to these questions, we will gain a deeper appreciation for the unspoken war behind the headlines and the movies, while gaining insights into how the WWII experience shaped and molded the character of the Americans of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Life in an Army Air Force barracks centered around the little coal-fired stove that sat in the center of the Nissen huts; the senior enlisted men often drew the cots closest to the stove but regardless of where you were, the barracks was almost always cold due to the shortages of fuel.  John Comer of the 381st Bomb Group said of his first night in one of the huts that "I doubt I ever spent a more miserable evening in my life. The dingy hut, designed for 12 men, was a dirty, dimly lighted, depressing place. It was bare except for 12 crude cots. A single low-watt bulb hung in the center of the building." Over time, the airmen settled in and made their barracks a home away from home. Here a group of enlisted men from Burtonwood Air Depot No. 2 enjoy a card game while one exhausted soldier sleeps clad in his leather jacket on his bunk. The mattresses themselves were called "biscuits" and described by another airman as "like a pillow in three segments and hard as hell." 

    Our World War II generation is rapidly passing from the scene at the rate of 131 per day, and estimates are now that barely 100,000 of the 16.1 million who served in the U.S. armed forces remain alive. Looking back on the war, Colonel Budd Peaslee of the 384^th Bomb Group wrote “the B-17s and B-24s will never again assemble into strike formation in the bitter cold of embattled skies. Never again will the musical thunder of their passage cause the very earth to tremble, the source of the sound lost in infinity, and seeming to emanate from all things, visible and invisible. The great deep-throated engines are forever silent. But on bleak and lonely winter nights in the English Midlands, ghost squadrons take off silently in the swirling mists of the North Sea from ancient weed-choked runways, and wing away toward the east, never to return. On other nights the deserted woodlands ring with unheard laughter and gay voices of young men and young women who once passed that way. Recollections of all these fades a little with each passing year until at last there will finally remain only the indelible records of the all-seeing Master of the Universe to recall the deeds of valor excelled by no other nation, arm, or service.”

The single most popular place for American airmen to go on leave was London, a bustling international city where soldiers could find sights to delight and astound on a nightly basis. This rare color view of Piccadilly Circus in London taken shortly after the war gives some sense of what a bustling place it was. John Paris of the 398th Bomb Group wrote that Piccadilly was "the Times Square of London, an amusement center and sin city all rolled into one. Now that most of the troops had left for France for the invasion, amusement and sin were plentiful and mighty cheap."  The Piccadilly Commandoes, London's irrepressible ladies of the night, "stridently competed for the attentions and favors of the reputedly wealthy Yanks," one airman remembered. "One of these ladies in her pitch outbid her competitors by promising that her fee of two quid included 'fun all the blooming noyte and breakfast in bed in the ruddy morning!"