During World War II, some 10,000 American bombers and fighters were shot down over Europe. Of the crews aboard, 26,000 men were killed, while 30,000 survived being shot down only to be captured and made prisoners of war. Against the longest of odds, nearly 3,000 airmen made it to the ground alive, evaded capture, and escaped to safety. These men proudly called themselves the Blister Club.
Drawing on tens of thousands of pages of mostly untapped documents in the National Archives, Michael Lee Lanning tells the story of these courageous airmen. They had received escape-and-evasion (E & E) training, and some were lucky enough to land with their E-&-E kits-but all bets were off once they hit the ground. They landed after an air catastrophe. The geography was usually unfamiliar. Civilians might or might not be trustworthy. German soldiers and Gestapo agents hunted down airmen as well as civilians who dared help them. If an airman abandoned his uniform for civilian garb, he forfeited Geneva Convention protections. Most faced the daunting task of escaping on foot across hundreds of miles. The fortunate connected with one of the established escape routes to Spain or Switzerland or across the English Channel, or they hooked up with the underground resistance or friendly civilians. Upon return to friendly lines, these men were often able to provide valuable intelligence about enemy troop dispositions and civilian morale. Many volunteered to fly again even though regulations prohibited it.
The Blister Club is history with a punch. With a historians eye, Lanning covers the hows and whys of escape-and-evasion and aerial combat in the European theater, but the book also vividly captures the stories of the airmen who did the escaping and evading, including that of a young pilot named Chuck Yeager, who, during his own escape, aided the French Resistance and helped another downed airman to safety-and then begged to fly again, eventually securing Eisenhowers approval to return to the air, where he achieved ace status.
Stories of escape are popular, especially those set during World War II, as are stories of the war in the air. Combining both of these, The Blister Club should find an enthusiastic audience.
Industry Reviews
Lanning's writing style is clear, straightforward, and engaging, but what makes this book especially riveting is that these stories are told largely in the words of the airmen themselves in their Evasion and Escape (E&E) reports. Using archival materials located at the National Archives and the Air War College Library, Lanning starts most of his twenty-six chapters with an airman's E&E report and follows with a discussion of similar reports. Lanning uses these documents so that the narrators can tell the stories of their survival in their own words. Lanning does not assume that his audience has more than a layperson's knowledge of this period in US military history, and, as a reader who has not read extensively on this topic, I found this book to be accessible. At the same time, it would be of interest to scholars who are well versed in the history of US Army Air Forces in the European theater of World War II.
-- "The American Archivist"
NetGalley Review: 5 stars
Last updated on 19 Sep 2021
"There's no debate that these downed airmen had the more hazardous task, but the incredible task of wading through 43,000 pages in 58 boxes of hand written accounts, typed first drafts, edited copies, final reports from US army air forces records is a close second in arduousness. These are the stories, in their own hands, of (primarily) American airmen evaders of WW2 who lived to utilize, write, and rewrite, the survival training of Escape and Evasion as instigated by Gen Curtis LeMay (Pacific Theater of Operations) and utilized in Europe. There was training and even a basic survival kit for each airman sent up. This book is a testimony to the bravery of the men (and the blisters on their feet) and effective use of the information supplied. Very well done!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Rowman & Littlefield, Stackpole Books via NetGalley. Thank you!"--Jan Tangen, consumer reviewer
