The US Eighth Air Force in World War II: Ira Eaker, Hap Arnold, and Building American Air Power, 1942–1943 by William J. Daugherty. University of North Texas Press, 2024, 348 pp.
The US Eighth Air Force in World War II is author William Daugherty’s first book about a military history topic. Daugherty already had two book titles under his belt before turning his attention to the Eighth Air Force. In 2004, he published a book about covert action and US presidents, and 12 years later, he authored a book about the hostage crisis in Iran. As a former CIA officer, Daugherty had been part of the group of Americans held against their will for 444 days by Iranian terrorists. While not a trained historian, Daugherty also served eight years as a fighter pilot for the US Marine Corps, and his participation in the Vietnam War allows him to clarify flight issues to the reader that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.
Daugherty’s book features only about 280 text pages divided into 31 chapters and therefore offers a very concise coverage of the topic. The high number of chapters compared to a comparatively low number of pages leads to some puzzlement. Some chapters are not only extremely short—four to six pages in length—but also unevenly named, with titles ranging from clearly-worded descriptive phrases to single names, dates, or codes. While such terms may be generally clear and known to military historians or airpower professionals, a layman or student new to the air war in World War II Europe might find this confusing. That would be a shame, because the book is especially suited for the latter group of readers.
While there are a considerable number of books about the “Mighty Eighth,” the author focuses in his account mainly on leadership, personalities, structure, and organization. The book centers on the relationship between the Eighth’s initial commander, Major General Ira Clarence Eaker, and his superior in Washington, then-Lieutenant General Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, who was known as “the Chief” because of his first position as the chief of the Air Corps.
Appropriately, the author offers two introductory chapters about the US Army Air Corps between the World Wars to help understand the enormous work laid out for the personalities involved in creating an instrument of air war. The Army educational system has been rightly criticized as narrow-minded and dogmatic, and this critique was also leveled at the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama. Its small staff and the acolytes created by their dogma were aptly dubbed the “Bomber Mafia.” These officers had somehow come to believe that heavily armed bombers flying at high altitude in daylight would somehow penetrate the enemy fighter envelope and flak barriers and engage their targets successfully by way of precision bombing. Sooner or later, the enemy would succumb to these attacks and surrender.
Interestingly, then and now, not a shred of evidence existed that supported this belief. This dogma would severely hamper the buildup of air power because the technology required for long-range escort fighters would long be neglected, resulting in unnecessary losses for the bomber forces. Both Eaker and Arnold were considered part of the Bomber Mafia: while Arnold eventually recognized the importance of long-range escort fighters, Eaker held onto the bomber-only winning strategy longer than almost anyone else. It is one of the great benefits of the book that the author pulls no punches when it comes to criticizing the tactics of these days, leadership styles, and many operational decisions.
A considerable part of the book details the correspondence between Eaker and his boss and the different command styles they employed. The author seems to have a soft spot for Eaker, but that does not prevent him from leveling criticism where it is due. Eaker was ordered to undertake the herculean task of building an air force in Britain out of almost nothing, with few bombers and green crews and officers, and to strike Germany decisively. Eaker received undue pressure from the British, as well as from Washington. The latter was supposed to be filtered by Arnold, but instead, the ‘Chief’ opened the pressure valve even further.
Eaker received throughout his command constant missives from Arnold to fly more missions with more bombers and to destroy more things. These short and sometimes brutally direct dispatches in several pages of great detail but did not attempt to correct the Chief, which may have been his downfall. While Arnold may have been too busy directing the air war on a global scale to read Eaker’s explanations about his situation, Eaker commanded a key air force in direct contact with the main enemy and the main ally, and every word of his feedback would hold great value for Arnold. The bad weather over Britain and the North Atlantic, the lack of experienced maintenance crews, and the lengthening of the turnover of functional Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses were all real-life issues rather than excuses of a weak commander.
It happened often that when Eaker had built up a few bombardment groups with experienced crews and maintenance teams, he was ordered to hand them over to a different theater of war, to his understandable frustration. Instead of factoring that in when drafting his missives, Arnold kept relentless pressure on Eaker, which led to his disgraceful dismissal by the end of 1943, despite their long friendship. The intervention of other senior commanders convinced Arnold to change Eaker’s removal to a stateside training position into an “upward” dismissal commanding the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. For anyone else, this would have been considered a promotion because it involved the command of four air forces. But Eaker did not want to leave his European war effort unfinished and took exception to how Arnold had railroaded him.
While Eaker deserved credit as an airpower pioneer prevailing in a difficult time when building up the United States’ fledgling airpower in Europe, he should have been replaced much earlier with someone who was more mentally flexible and fighter-minded. His successor Lieutenant General James Harold “Jimmy”“ Doolittle, demonstrated that things could be done better in the Eighth Air Force.
Daugherty relies heavily on secondary literature, most prominently, Donald Miller’s Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (Simon & Schuster, 2006). Therefore, a professional military historian, or any serious expert on air war will not find anything new in the book. He does notcite the very well-researched and enormously helpful multi-volume series The Army Air Forces In World War II edited by Wesley L. Craven and James L. Cate (Office of Air Force History, various). Although the book features rudimentary maps of countries the Eighth attacked, these come without range circles, helping the reader understand the difficulties of reaching rewarding targets and accompanying the bombers with fighter escorts. Still, some omissions are notable. Hamburg, for example, was not attacked once but several times as the target of Operation Gomorrah but is not mentioned in the book. The joint British-US day-and-night firebombing operation caused several firestorms in Hamburg and killed more than 35,000 people, of whom more than 60 percent were women and children.
Despite some criticism The US Eighth Air Force in World War II, is one of the best introductory works for the student of air war in general and airpower in World War II specifically. The book is succinct, presents strong citations, uses straightforward language, and avoids ambiguity, all crucial aspects of a solid war book. In addition, it provides a valuable concise discussion about leadership on the organizational level.
Dr. Jörg Muth