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As a young man growing up in Asheville, North Carolina, Robert Morgan was a fast-driving party boy--a hell-raiser. But when his mothercommitted suicide upon learning she had inoperable brain cancer, Morgan's life changed dramatically. He was no longer a carefree playboy; he was a man searching for meaning.
He found that meaning at the controls of an airplane, and in the flak-and fighter-filled skies over Occupied France and Nazi Germany. The plane was a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. Morgan named her the Memphis Belle in honor of his fiancAce, a Memphis beauty named Margaret Polk. He and his crew flew 25 successful daylight missions over Europe in the Belle, and wereimmortalized by Hollywood director William Wyler in a 1944 documentary called The Memphis Belle. In those 25 harrowing missions, Morgan never lost a crew member. The only casualty associated with the Belle was Morgan's engagement to the plane's namesake; it simply couldn't survive the War Department's publicity demands.
A powerful chronicle of loyalty, love, and astonishing bravery, The Man Who Flew the Memphis Belle takes you into the heart of the war above 20,000 feet, and into the unforgettable life of one of America's greatest World War II heroes.
