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The pilots and crews of B-17 bombers in World War II made history even before they flew their first missions. Not only did they bring aerial warfare to new levels of power, but they were the products of a training program that was unprecedented in its scale and complexity. In a one-year course, thousands of civilians, most of them with no flying experience, were taught the technical skills, teamwork, and emotional toughness required to fly a huge and complex plane in combat.
Many books have been written about the air battles of World War II, but none has taken the reader through the process that transformed young men into combat pilots. Eugene Fletcher, author of Fletcher's Gang, an account of his crew's missions over Europe, now provides an engaging and authentic look at that training. Fletcher was raised on a Depression-squeezed farm in Eastern Washington. After two years as a teenage professional jockey, he returned home to finish high school and then entered Whitman College on a scholarship. While there he earned a civilian pilot's license. When he received his draft notice in June 1942, he enlisted in the grueling aviation training program of the Army Air Force.
Mister is the story of Fletcher's training year: both the education of a combat pilot and the experiences shared by Gene and his wife Sherry, who were among the thousands of young couples who started their lives together in a state of nomadic uncertainty. The danger, the boredom, the discipline, and the exhilaration of aviation training all are vividly recalled. Fletcher and his classmates were part of a huge high-stakes experiment that showed the military at its dedicated best and its demeaning worst.
By January 1944, Fletcher had command of a giant B-17 bomber and a ten-man crew. He was twenty-two. A year later, he and the rest of "Fletcher's Gang" had flown thirty-five combat missions in Europe without a casualty.
Fletcher's Gang provided an unforgettable portrait of daily life at the height of aerial war in Europe. Mister explains, with the same humor and humanity, how the Army trained the crews capable of such feats.
