Following the invasion of Normandy, the daylight bomber war reached its climax as the Eighth Air Force B-17s and B-24s pushed back the boundaries, and huge fleets of bombers penetrated further afield into the diminishing Reich on raids as far afield as Leipzig, Dresden, southern Germany and Czechoslovakia. As the war dragged on it became obvious that hostilities would not be over by Christmas, although the German offensive in the Ardennes known as the Battle of the Bulge only delayed the inevitable. Allied air power helped stop the short-lived offensive and by January 1945, before the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the Third Reich was on the brink of defeat, and victory in Europe was assured. Although air power did not on its own win the war, the war could not have been won without it.In this fourth volume, Martin Bowman tells the story of the Eighth Air Force’s campaign over Germany and Occupied Europe in the words of the men who flew the missions. Some 26,000 American airmen were killed in action and another 23,000 were shot down and taken into captivity as prisoners of war. This is a fitting testimony to their memory.