50 Mission Crush

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This unpretentious memoir features a neglected airplane and an overlooked Air Force. In 1944 Currier, who retired in 1969, was the navigator of a B-24 Liberator, flying strategic-bombardment missions with the 15th Air Force, based in Italy. The B-24, overshadowed by its more exciting stablemate, the Flying Fortress, was nevertheless an excellent aircraft for the long ranges and demanding flight conditions of the Mediterranean theater. And if the primary targets of the 15th Air Force lacked the obvious glamour of Hamburg or Berlin, Ploesti, Regensburg and Vienna were no milk runs. Currier's matter-of-fact description of the war of attrition waged over Europe during WW II is highlighted by a minor statistic. Of the 17 crews trained together in Currier's squadron, 10 were shot down in six months. The flight crews' distinctive grommetless cap, the ``fifty-mission crush,'' had a steep price. (July)

Library Journal

The product of a major engineering and production effort, the B-24 heavy bomber demanded similar commitment from the crews who manned it during World War II. This memoir tells the story of one such crew and their plane, ``Wood's Chopper,'' from training through combat missions in the war's Italian theater. The author's perspective as the aircraft's navigator provides a different point of view from the usual pilot-oriented memoir, and Currier paints an interesting picture of the lives (and deaths) of heavy-bomber crews operating in one of the lesser-known areas of wartime operations. The title refers to the appearance of the standard-issue army uniform hat after 50 wartime missions, following which crews were rotated home. Operational and combat losses were so heavy, however, that many of the aircraft and men did not survive to make their ``50.'' Recommended for military and aviation collections.-- Stanley Planton, Ohio Univ.-Chillicothe Lib.