James M. Davis. In Hostile Skies: An American B-24 Pilot in World War II. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006. xx + 226 pp. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57441-209-3.

Reviewed by Richard Byers (Department of History, North Georgia College and State University)
Published on H-German (August, 2006)

Life in a Liberator

The third volume to appear in this series, James Davis's account describes his experiences as a B-24 Liberator pilot posted to the European theater in 1944, where he flew over thirty combat missions during the height of the strategic bombing campaign. Like the second volume of this series, Ralph Nutter's With the Possum and the Eagle (2005), Davis's narrative, skillfully edited by David Snead, provides a vivid, arresting account of the terrifying and exhausting experience of aerial war over Europe during the Eighth Air Force's campaign to destroy German resources and resolve. Additionally, the first four chapters take readers into the long and intensive training process provided across the United States before deployment, an experience in many ways as demanding and harrowing as combat flying. Davis recounts a series of challenges during the eighteen-month training period stemming from the volatility of terrain, weather and intense pressure to perform and survive the several levels of flight training that characterized the experience of shaping United States Army Air Force pilots. Readers come away from his recollections wondering, like the author, how he survived it all.

The second half of the work shifts the narrative's focus to Europe and the grueling schedule of combat missions flown by Davis's 489th Bomb Group out of their base at Halesworth, England. Like many of his contemporaries, Davis succeeds in revealing a side of the Second World War that only those who experienced it can legitimately articulate; an honest, straightforward account of unprecedented circumstances. Through atrocious weather conditions, with reliable but temperamental aircraft, American conscript airmen confronted stiff German resistance, watched their comrades and friends die in front of them and continued their tasks far beyond normal limits of stamina and courage. Davis described his feelings this way: "When I say I had fear, I do not mean the fear of being killed in combat. I am sure we all had that. Of all my fears, the fear of failure was foremost in my mind. It was the fear of not performing as expected, making the wrong decision at a critical time, and letting my crew down" (p. 92). Danger was ubiquitous, even on the ground, as Davis's recollections of walking the streets of London under heavy attack by V-1 "buzz bombs" attest.

Experts, instructors of Second World War courses and general readers will find this work a valuable addition to the memoir literature on that conflict. Snead's footnote additions add to Davis's narrative by providing access to relevant documentary and secondary material.

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Citation: Richard Byers. Review of Davis, James M., In Hostile Skies: An American B-24 Pilot in World War II. H-German, H-Net Reviews. August, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12095

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