Customer Reviews

P-47 Pilots: The Fighter-Bomber Boys

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We owe Mr. Glenn a double debt of gratitude. He put his life on the line as a P-47 pilot in WWII and now he has put his experience in writing which has to be a courageous act in itself. I have read many accounts of aerial warfare. Mr. Glenn's Fighter Bomber Boys is by far the most exciting and captivating. This book is destined to become a military history classic. Finally a book to fill in a critical missing gap in the history of airwar, that of the P-47 pilot's down and dirty and tragic story of the strafing and bombing of the enemy. Mr. Glenn has a thoroughly unpretentious and enjoyable style of prose. His chapters are short, to the point, and graphic. You simultaneously feel that you are looking over his shoulder as he progresses through the war and you feel as if you are sitting across from him in his living room as he recounts his experiences. The book is a sheer joy to read. Mr. Glenn pulls no punches. Be prepared for the real nitty-gritty of the fighter pilot's struggle for survival. I am the son of a 9th Air Force P-47 Fighter Bomber pilot. My Dad could only tell me very little before emotionally choking up. Thank you Mr. Glenn for having the courage to put your experience in writing. You have helped me to further understand and appreciate my father.

Tom Glenn tells an exceptional story exceptionally well. Glenn brings you into his cockpit and his muddy tent. There you can inhale the horrifying, glorifying experiences of these air warriors. In their Thunderbolts, the fighter bomber pilots soar beyond incredible and dive to the brink of impossible. The book is insightful, riveting and an eye-opener. If you only have room for one book in your current time/money budget--pick this one. Sadly, the missions, the contributions, the victories (& the staggering casualty rate) of the fighter bomber pilot is barely mentioned or omitted entirely from most WWII chronicles. My thanks to Tom Glenn for not letting this bit of history disappear and to he and his fellow pilots who risked all for us.

I read this book and loved that Tom Glenn pulled no punch in telling the story of himself and other pilots who did one of the most dangerous pilot jobs in WWII - Air Ground attack. Both my father and uncle were fighter pilots who did not survive the WWII. Tom's book gave me a window into their world which I would not other wise found. There is some much written about air to air combat but so little about this critical part of WWII History.

This has got to be the best publication on P-47 air to ground work. The author details information such that you feel that you are right in the middle of the action. A very well put together piece of work. well worth the expense of purchasing and reading, for those interested in this type of action and history of the WW II Air War. I did.

I have read several WWII pilot memoirs. IMO, Tom Glenn's account of his days as a fighter-bomber pilot in a P-47 in the last year of the war is one of the best-on a par with Charles Lamb's classic account of his Fairey Swordfish career "To War in a Stringbag". The P-47 did double duty in WWII-as a fighter plane in air-to-air combat and as a primarily air-to-ground aircraft. Glenn flew his in the air-to-ground role, hence the title "Fighter-Bomber Boys".

Glenn provides great insight to the "citizen soldier" concept of America in WWII. Death and carnage would shock most people in everyday life, but Glenn shows how the fighter-bomber boys had to rise above such squeamishness and sensibilities and become numb to such horrors in order to continue doing a dangerous and important job. A telling story is when Glenn describes accidentally running into a pedestrian who had walked in front of his car after he returned home from the war. Glenn felt bad for the old guy, but was ready to move on from the accident almost immediately. He had lost the ability to stand around and grieve and angst over such an event, because that was what was required of a pilot in WWII. One could not get lost in loss and grief when it was a day-to-day occurrence as it was for the fighter-bomber boys. He really shows the difficulty of returning to normalcy after daily exposure to death and destruction.

Glenn describes the strategy behind the use of the P-47 as a ground attack weapon. Patton felt that the fighter-bomber boys could serve as a protective flank for his ground troops as they moved across France and Germany. Strafing and troop support were their primary occupations in the final campaigns. He vividly describes the shock when the Battle of the Bulge showed that the Germans were not yet totally defeated, and the allies still had a life-and-death battle ahead of them before the war in Europe was truly won.

Another interesting episode is his squadron's encounter with a Hollywood entertainment group headed by Bing Crosby. Glenn got to spend some time with Fred Astaire (who got stranded with the tour). Astaire was visibly awed and moved to be in the presence of men who were fighting and dying for the freedom; quite a contrast to some of the Hollywood types today.

I have read this book a couple of times, and will re-read it many more times. I was fortunate to order a copy direct from the publisher in which Glenn autographed a copy for me. The gratitude we owe to men such as Glenn is immeasurable, and one gets a sense of this when reading this well-written and entertaining book.

I completely agree with all the previous reviews about how written this book is and how the chapters convey personal war experiences and viewpoints which others have not described. I've read many personal memoirs of WWII, and this is one of the best. And if you've ever wondered what fighter pilots do when they need to "answer nature's call", then you will learn things like that as well as more substantive experiences in WWII. Truly a classic war memoir and a good read.

Ihave the good fortune to know someone who flew with Mr. Glen, who wrote this book. I have read the book over and over. It makes you feel as though you are right there in the cockpit with them, which is something I have dreamed about doing since I was a child. These men truly were a breed apart. This book is time well invested for the Thunderbolt enthusiast.

This was a very good read,My father was a Thunderbolt pilot,I was to dumb to ask him things I wanted to know about his life when he was alive.Now I half to read about other pilots just to have an idea what it was like for him.What A Fool I was.

Tom's book is less than 160 pages long, but in those few pages he has told one hell of a story. He has gotten down to the real nitty-gritty of what it was like to be a fighter-bomber pilot over Europe in WW2. The air war has always been portrayed as impersonal and clean. The job of Tom and his fellow 9th AF P-47 pilots was to support the ground troops. Their living conditions were similar to those of the ground troops, and they even fought much the same way - shooting it out nose to nose with the enemy troops and guns. It could get VERY personal and VERY dirty on occasion. I refer in particular to the chapters "The General's Decision" and "Retribution". In "Come Fly With Me" Tom takes the reader along for the ride and shares the highs and lows of a typical mission from start to finish. The "fighter-bomber boys" never got the press that their air-to-air counterparts did - no "glamour" in their type of fighting. Their contribution to the victory in Europe was vital, and I thank Tom very much for telling their story.

This book is exactly how it happened in World War 11, ninth Air Force