Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine
by Barrett Tillman, Regnery History, Washington, D.C., 2014, $29.99
Long overdue and eagerly awaited, Barrett Tillman’s latest book tops his past efforts and will likely be scooped up by the thousands for its rarity, writing and something else far more important: his ability to do definitive research at every level, accumulate the human interest factors too often overlooked in a work of this scope, and then integrate all this into a captivating narrative. As Tillman notes, a great many books have been written about the Eighth Air Force, and justifiably so. Yet none of them approaches Forgotten Fifteenth’s combination of clarity, detail, inclusiveness and accuracy.
Tillman’s prologue sets the tone for his story of a vast aerial armada, well armed, well led and tasked with terrifying missions. Yet the Fifteenth Air Force somehow remained almost anonymous in the series of World War II bomber histories. This was inexplicable in many ways, for its leaders were famous, the raids were celebrated and medals were showered on participants. But the Fifteenth somehow “never caught on” to the publicity trains of the “Mighty Eighth” or the Twentieth. This may have been because the unit not only operated against deadly targets such as Ploesti and Vienna, but also carried out vital operations against another dozen Axis or occupied territories that didn’t capture the same blazing headlines.
Tillman takes the Fifteenth from its desert start-up in November 1943 through all its campaigns, extending beyond the war’s end. In each chapter we meet new heroes, find out about evolving tactics and equipment, see the enemy’s reactions and come to admire the dedicated young men who crewed the bombers, as well as their ground-based colleagues who worked so hard to keep them in the air. In Forgotten Fifteenth, Tillman lays the perfect groundwork for a 13-part television series.
Simply stated, Forgotten Fifteenth belongs in every public library, and especially in everyone’s personal aviation library. I suspect it will be followed by a flood of publications on the Fifteenth, and that will be fine. But Tillman’s book will remain the standard for decades to come.
Originally published in the November 2014 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
