The Wild Blue
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany, by historian and best selling author Stephen Ambrose, is a New York Times best selling non-fiction book published in 2001. It details the lives and World War II experiences of pilots, bombardiers, navigators, radio operators and gunners flying B-24 bombers of the U.S. Army Air Force against Nazi Germany. The book entails a recounting of George McGovern's exceptional career as a chief pilot of a B-24 with the 455th Bomb Group in Italy, encompassing 35 bombing missions. With the odds of surviving all 35 missions as low as 50%, the bomber crews flew during dangerous daylight hours, in risky tight flying formations, and despite bad weather and assaults of heavy, deadly, flak from ground-based German anti-aircraft guns.
Author background
Ambrose was a history professor for 35 years from 1960-1995. After 1971, he taught at New Orleans University where he was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989. Despite his academic credentials, his image was tarnished by accusations of plagiarism near the end of his career, particularly after his publication of The Wild Blue, his last volume. Revealing the sources of plagiarism in The Wild Blue, Fred Barnes reported in The Weekly Standard that Ambrose had taken passages from Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II, by Thomas Childers, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ambrose had footnoted sources, but had not enclosed in quotation marks numerous passages from Childers's book. The use of italics to indicate some of the text was copied from other writer's works, however, might have been sufficient to avoid charges of plagiarism at the time, and in subsequent editions Ambrose addressed the issue. A more sensitive researcher might have even forgiven Ambrose's scholarly oversights as he was not long from dying of cancer during his final drafts of The Wild Blue.Perhaps best known of Ambrose's work's is a lengthy history of Dwight Eisenhower The Supreme Commander and a two-volume full biography, which are considered "the standard" on the subject. His work on the Eisenhower volumes influenced the tone of admiration and reverence he took towards veterans in general, and particularly his characters in The Wild Blue. Focusing on the real attraction of The Wild Blue, Kennedy White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote that Dr. Ambrose "combined high standards of scholarship with the capacity to make history come alive for a lay audience."
Ambrose wrote an extensive history of Richard Nixon, though he was not a supporter of his presidency or presidential candidacy in 1972. While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling Nixon during a speech the president gave on the KSU campus. His opposition to the Vietnam War stood in contrast to his research on "presidents and the military at a time when such topics were increasingly regarded by his colleagues as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose may have secretly jumped at the opportunity to depict McGovern in Wild Blue as a strong, patriotic American in contrast to the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign that may have subtly portrayed the Dakota Senator, who campaigned for a quicker end to the bombing in Viet Nam, as a supporter of draft dodging, amnesty seeking, anti-American hippies. According to political scholar Theodore White, during the mid-term elections of November 1970, presidential front runner Edmund Muskie had felt the need to respond to statements by President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew impugning the patriotism of Democrats. In the divisive congressional era of the early 70's, McGovern's Hatfield-McGovern Amendment to bring a quicker end to the war had already been defeated in Congress by the time he was nominated before a divided party as the Democratic candidate for President against the incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972.
Content
Description of the B-24
The story is important as the B-24 was the most widely used and manufactured bomber in WWII, yet few novels have fully detailed the challenges faced by their Bomber crews who flew them in raids over Germany. At approximately 18,500 units produced – including 8,685 manufactured by Ford Motor Company – the B-24 holds records as the world's most produced bomber, heavy bomber, multi-engine aircraft, and American military aircraft in history. According to one source, the crews experienced an alarming casualty rate of slightly over fifty percent due to the dangers of daylight bombing, training flights, and other factors. For the better known Memphis Belle, a B-17 bomber, in her first three months of missions flown from Bassingbourn, England, her 8th Air Force Group experienced an even more astonishing casualty rate of 80%. Like the other planes in its bomb group, McGovern's B-24 bomber was a four engine craft that generally housed a crew of 9-10. Adding to the regular danger involved in takeoffs and landings of such a heavy, bomb-laden craft, "runways were often dangerous, patchwork affairs, the former farmland covered with steel matting."Steering and controls
Faced with lengthy flights, the pilots sometimes struggled with a wheel that had no power steering and were forced to adjust and interpret control panels that could be complex, and that sprawled across the front console in a confusing array of dials and meters. As noted by Ambrose, and shown at right, the bomber had "twenty-seven gauges on the panel, twelve levers for the throttle, turbocharger, and fuel mixture, four on the pilot's side on his right, four on the co-pilot's side on his left". "There were over a dozen switches, plus brake pedals, rudders and more". The wheel, also shown at right, or "yoke" as it was called, was as big as that on a large truck. Ambrose wrote "The B-24 was a man's airplane. It could be sternly unforgiving. It always required and sometimes demanded almost super-human strength to fly. On a long mission it could wear out even the strongest pilot". As Ambrose noted, the physical strength required to control the yoke was compounded by the physical fatigue caused by long bombing runs. Even in training, one pilot wrote "Every third day we go twenty hours straight and the two days in between are seventeen hours long...we fly every day and sometimes we don't get home 'til 3 a.m. but we still get up and go again. I believe combat will be a rest after this." For actual round trip bombing runs to Germany, as many as ten hours of flight time were not uncommon, and though longer flights were likely for planes with damaged engines, average flight time was closer to six to eight hours.Primitive conditions on flights
Conditions on the plane were primitive. There were no bathrooms, and no kitchen, despite the long flight times. "Breathing was possible only by wearing an oxygen mask above 10,000 feet in altitude. The mask often froze to the wearer's face". Of greatest difficulty, besides the extremely cramped quarters, "there was no heat, despite temperatures that at 20,000 feet and higher got as low as 40 or even 50 degrees below zero." The wind blew constantly through the plane, especially when the bomb bay doors were open, causing greater cold and discomfort. The crew could urinate only through two relief tubes, one forward and one aft, but due to the extreme cold and heavy layers of clothing, this could be a slow, painful, and difficult process, where the men could risk frostbite. Not uncommonly, the urine in the relief tubes froze. Perspiration, not uncommon with the physical work and heavy clothing worn, could also freeze.In comparison with its contemporaries, including the B-17 bomber, the B-24 was relatively difficult to fly and had poorer performance at low-speed, although it was considered a fast and long range bomber for the era, and regularly completed trans-Pacific flights. Making it a somewhat easier target for ground-based anti-aircraft, it also had a lower ceiling and lacking the strength of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, it could tolerate less damage. Remarkably vulnerable in some respects, the plane, perhaps to reduce weight, had an "aluminum skin that could be cut with a knife". According to Ambrose, damage to the wings could be more costly than on the B-17. At approximately 18,500 units – including 8,685 manufactured by Ford Motor Company – it holds records as the world's most produced bomber, heavy bomber, multi-engine aircraft, and American military aircraft in history.
Odds of surviving 35 missions
The chances of survival were poor. In its early operations, McGovern's 15th Air Force had 3,544 B-24s and 1,407 B-17s. In its first year and a half, before McGovern completed his training, the 15th had 1,756 B-24's and 624 B-17s shot down, representing very close to a 50% loss rate for B-24s. The odds for McGovern on his first bombing flight in late 1944 of completing his required 35 missions without suffering a casualty, capture, or death were only somewhat better.Crew on the ''Dakota Queen''
Lt. George McGovern, pilotLt. Ralph "Bill" Rounds, co-Pilot, fun loving, womanizer and outstanding formation flyer, had wanted to be a fighter pilot
Sgt. Kenneth Higgins, Radioman, a wit that could "deflate pomposity"
Lt. Carroll Woodrow "C.W." Cooper, navigator
Sgt. Isador Irving Seigal, tail gunner, eccentric, slept with a loaded gun, but spoke well of McGovern
Sgt. William "Tex" Ashlock, waist gunner, a Texan with a "soft drawl and competent manner"
Sgt. Robert O'Connell, nose gunner, excellent poker player
Sgt. Mike Valko, flight engineer, short, drinker, but highly submissive to McGovern's wishes
Sgt. William McAfee, ball turret gunner, happy-go-lucky and popular
Lt. Sam Adams, navigator and bombardier, intelligent, well-read intense, planned to become a minister
Marion Colvert, substitute navigator when McGovern landed the B-24 with the blown tire, a Kansas native and former college linebacker at Kansas State
Sgt. John B. Mills, tall tail gunner, replaced Siegal who had to be voted out. Relaxed enough to sleep on return flights.
The background and an occasional mention of nearly each crew member is provided in the novel.