Customer Reviews

The Forbidden Diary: A B-24 Navigator Remember

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Not the most entertaining book but not bad either.Some reviewers have come down a little hard on it.It's a little too technical for some readers but not so filled with errors as some reviewers here claim.Stewart corrects at least one error later in the book. Put it this way:if you want to read just ONE book about bomber crews this isn't the one.It's a little too dry.If you are interested in the subject and can afford to buy several books then this one can be included.

Although there have been several disappointing reviews of this book I personally found it informative from several points. First off my father was a crew member on B-24 Liberators and this gave me an insight as to how a "Liberator" crew flew their missions. As far as being to technical and boring I didn't find it so, there are some missions that were "Milk Runs" but the author points these out prior to reading them and makes up for them with experiences he and his crew had while not flying combat missions. This is also the first book I have read that mentions the "Davis Wing", which I personally found very informative.

I was hoping that a "forbidden diary", written as the action happened, would be very interesting. It wasn't. I am sure the author went through some hairaising experiences, cheating death on every mission. I just wish he had told the reader about them. Instead, we get a very technical description of the airplane written in a boring style. His Editor should have known better. That's why we buy these books...to get a feel of how it really was. Unfortunately, the description of his missions felt no more exciting than a commercial flight between New York and Chicago. "We went up, dropped the bombs, then came down." Wild stuff.

"The Forbidden Dairy" by John L. Stewart.
Subtitled: "A B-24 Navigator Remembers".
McGraw Hill, New York, 1998.

During World War II, Allied Airmen were forbidden to keep diaries. The idea was that, if captured, the diary of an Airman would aid the enemy in determining crucial facts about the person, his unit, and the
unit's location and organization. The author, John L. Stewart, DID keep a diary of his stint in the 8th Air Force during daylight raids on Festung Europa. Not only did Dr. Stewart keep a diary, but it seems that he took photos of the action over Europe, and, of course, photos of his air base near the town of Norwich, England. Dr. Stewart's photos are interspersed throughout the text of the book, and there are some interesting, vintage views of England. For example, on page 69, there is a nice shot of the Approach to Tower Bridge... is that the Bridge that was moved to Arizona? The author has included period shots of himself, his friends, their Nissen hut quarters and a group of Airmen gathered around a pot belly stove. He has also included photographic evidence of the damage wrought by bombing and in turn, the damage received by the B-24 bombers of his squadron and his group. The visual record provided in this book is a primary source for the history of the bombing campaign from England.
John L. Stewart flew in a B-24 named, "Gremlin Manor". Much of the front part of the book is devoted to, his diary, a written record of each and every of the 31 missions that Stewart flew. In retrospect, some of the missions were a "piece of cake", making for somewhat unexciting reading. But then, you will find a period picture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen. The photo had to be taken after March 17th 1945 (St. Patrick's Day), since the Bridge is collapsed into the river. This is a primary look at history.
After the War, Navigator Stewart went on to earn a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Stanford University; he then taught at various universities and colleges. This may account for his need to add Appendix A, some 32 pages explaining "Dead Reckoning", Algebra, Vector Analysis and a collection of photos of some the equipment he used in World War II. As an Electrical Engineer, myself, (Senior Member IEEE), I recall taking Vector Analysis in grad school at Newark College of Engineering. In my humble opinion, this Appendix is not needed, or I would have included a much-reduced Appendix A, just so the reader would get the flavor of the difficulty of navigating an aircraft ... especially when people are popping bullets through your aircraft!
Finally, as other Amazon reviewers have complained, there are some spelling errors. I believe the worst is on page 38, where the Norden Bombsight is called "NORDON". The bombsight was named after its inventor, Carl Norden, a Dutchman who emigrated to the United States before World War II. The Norden Bombsight was first produced in New York City.

As other reviewers have alluded to, this book is not a riveting account of bomber combat along the lines of Crosby's "Wing and a Prayer" or Smith's "The Wrong Stuff". That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book for the extensive technical information on equipment and navigation processes used by B-24 navigators. This title is not simply full of dry information, it contains several interesting anecdotes about the 467th BG and life at Rackheath.

While other reviewers complain that this book is not "exciting" enough, I completely disagree. I have read several "exciting" memoirs written by WWII aircrew members, and to be honest it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate one book from another. The details Stewart provides are what separate this memoir from others out there, giving today's reader a glimpse of the technology and practices of the day.

If like me you have already devoured the "exciting" memoirs, do yourself a favor and pick this one up for a change of pace. While this book would not make a good introduction to 8th AF operations for the uninformed, it more than satisfies for those who enjoy the subject.

There have been a spate of first person accounts of World War II action in the last few years, spawned, I suppose, by the fact that the veterans of that conflict are aging and want to leave a record behind. How disappointing that a young man's war experiences in the extraordinarily dangerous skies of Europe should be so badly presented. There is no life in the narrative and a large (too large) portion is devoted to technical matters and equipment. Perhaps time has diminished the emotions that a 19 year old in flak filled airspace felt and that is too bad. Rather than presenting the survival of his missions -- no mean achievement in itself -- in the fashion he did, it would have been better to have shared a few memories with his family. Don't spend your money on this if you expect the drama, excitement and fear of air combat. If you must read it, get it from a library. I salute the author for his service but not for his writing.

From my perspective as a former Strategic Air Command (SAC) B-47 and B-52H radar navigator (bombardier)who went through nav school in 1950, I found Stewart's book more interesting than the casual reader might, but I can understand the disappointment of the non-professional reader. Nevertheless, his explanations of navigation and his duties were well done, and I especially enjoyed his candid description of life on and off a bomber base during his combat tour in England. .

One glaring mistake was his statement that there were no B-17 units in the 15th Air Force. There were six, including the 98th Bomb Group, which I was later in myself as a B-47 nav in Lincoln, Nebraska, from 1958-60, when it was a wing. I was also surprised to find so many spelling errors, e.g.,intervalometer, especially for a Ph.D. who taught at the University of Michigan, my alma mater. Navigators such as Stewart was in B-24s are indeed relics, as he says, but I don't think the B-52H radar navigators and navigators on crews that operated so successfully in Desert Storm or in Kosovo more recently will agree.