Long before he entered politics, when he was just in his early 20s, South Dakotan
George McGovern flew 35 bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe in the Army
Air Force, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. Stephen Ambrose, the industrious historian, focuses on McGovern and the young crew of his
B-24 bomber, volunteers all, in this vivid study of the air war in Europe. Manufactured by a consortium of companies that included
Ford Motor and Douglas Aircraft, the B-24 bomber, dubbed the Liberator, was designed to drop high explosives on enemy positions well behind the front lines -- and especially on the German capital, Berlin. Unheated, drafty, and only lightly armored, the planes were dangerous places to be, and indeed, only 50 percent of their crews survived to the war's end. Dangerous or not, they did their job, delivering thousand-pound bombs to targets deep within Germany and Austria. In his fast-paced narrative, Ambrose follows many other flyers (including the
Tuskegee Airmen, the African American pilots who gave the B-24s essential fighter support on some of their most dangerous missions) as they brave the long odds against them, facing moments of glory and terror alike. "It would be an exaggeration to say that the B-24 won the war for the Allies," Ambrose writes. "But don't ask how they could have won the war without it." --Gregory McNamee
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Background Information
George McGovern, a senator from South Dakota, was nominated by the Democrats in 1972 as a peace candidate, but he lost heavily in November to Richard Nixon. The Ford Motor Company was founded by Henry Ford in 1903 and was the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the country until overtaken by General Motors in the 1920s.