Page 36 - World Airshow News Autumn 2024

A WORLD WAR II HIStORy tOuR

The Bomber Boys of the Mighty Eighth

The restored control tower at Thorpe
Abbotts. On the afternoon of a
th
mission, 100 Bomb Group leadership
would stand at the railings, anxiously
scanning the skies, waiting for their
returning bombers.

I t’s a sunny early October morning roar of a B-17 Flying Fortress on takeoff “Masters of the Air: The Mighty Eighth

roll. I instinctively look up to gaze out the
in East Anglia, a rural, primarily
Over the Skies of Europe”, chronicled the
agricultural region about ninety
miles north-northeast of London, window where the runway should be, as story of U.S. Eighth Air Force bomber
if I would actually see a B-17 taking to
crews that were based in England during
England. I’m standing on the observation the air, but all I see is grass. For one split- World War II.
deck of the restored control tower at the second, a perfectly timed recording of the This particular tour featured historian
former Thorpe Abbotts airbase, where al- distinctive sound of those four big Wright Dr. Donald L. Miller, author of the New
most exactly eighty-one years earlier, in Cyclone engines had transported me back York Times best-seller “Masters of the
October 1943, the men of the 100 Bomb to 1943. Air”, an in-depth history of the Eighth
th
Group experienced one of the worst Air Force during World War II. Also join-
weeks of their lives. It would be a week so mAStERS OF tHE AIR ing our group was Kirk Saduski of Play-
deadly that it would come to be known as This past October, my wife Pam and I tone Productions, Co-Producer of the
“Black Week”. flew to England to join an eight-day tour AppleTV+ miniseries “Masters of the
As I walked into the small, glass-walled sponsored by the Educational Travel de- Air” that was based on Dr. Miller’s book.
tower cab on the roof of the two-story partment of the National World War Throughout the tour, Miller and Saduski
concrete building, I hear the unmistakable II Museum in New Orleans. Our tour, provided detailed insights not only on the

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