Customer Reviews

Not Home for Christmas: A Day in the Life of the Mighty Eighth

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Author John Meurs had the experience of seeing an American B-17 bomber crash in his yard in Holland when he was just a child. The date of the crash was Sunday, November 26, 1944. Many years later, Meurs began investigating the events of this day. He found out that well over 1,000 American planes were in the air that day, and many of them attacked the synthetic oil fields near Misburg, Germany. 34 American bombers were lost that day, and Meurs has researched each one. In "Not Home For Christmas", Meurs discusses each lost plane's roles in the mission that fateful November day.

The skies around Misburg were filled with German fighters and flak. Despite having fighter escorts, many bombers found themselves being shot from the sky. Many of the crews were killed or captured; some were murdered by furious civilians. Relying on first-person interviews from survivors as well as testimonies from relatives and other crew members, Meurs paints a picture of what it was like for the crews of the 8th Air Force on this bloody day.

I found "Not Home For Christmas" to be an informative book, but it did have some drawbacks. There are many spelling and grammatical errors throughout which makes it difficult to follow. Further, there is very little input from the author. Instead, he relies solely on the first-person accounts while adding very little of his own thoughts. On the other hand, the first-person accounts are very eye-opening, and I learned a great deal from them. For example, Americans who were captured by the German military were usually treated fairly well, unlike prisoners of the Japanese, who were constantly tortured, starved, and many times, killed. Once the American POWs neared liberation, many Germans threw down their arms and surrendered to the former POWs.

I recommend this book to readers of 8th Air Force history. The first-person recollections of survivors paint a clear picture of what it was like to be an air crew member fighting in the skies over Germany.

There is a tremendous amount of detail about the Eighth Air Force and World Ward II in the book. Fascinating reading.