Shot Down: The True Story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the Crew of the B-17 ‘Susan Ruth’[em] [/em]

Snyder shares the story of his father’s WWII bombing crew and their fate after being shot down over Belgium. He uses his personal relationship with the surviving crewmen and their families, as well as interviews, wartime letters, and official histories, to reconstruct the experiences of the crew from enlistment through to the war’s end. The book unfolds in three stages: it opens with a well-told account of industrial-scale aircrew training in the U.S., moves into an exploration of the life of U.S. airmen in England that is valuable for its insights into the social life and the daily routine on a U.S. bomber base, and finally describes the crew’s experiences after they are shot down and attempt to evade capture and survive the war. Throughout the book the author is careful to set the larger context of the war without losing readers to unnecessary acronyms or overly technical discussions. This is a great introduction to the history of the U.S. air war in Europe, humanized by the experience of a single bomber crew. Maps and illus. [em](BookLife) [/em]