The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24’s Over Germany

By Stephen E. Ambrose

All these men were Sergeants because the AAF learned early that when the crews of the B-17’s and B-24’s of the Eighth Air Force bailed out over enemy territory and were taken prisoner (although many of them managed to evade and escape the Germans via Spain thanks to the French underground), the stalags where they were imprisoned were run by the Luftwaffe. It was German practice to treat Sergeants who became POWs different from and better than Corporals or Privates. Further, Luftwaffe Chief Herman Goring, who had a romantic view of the “Knights of the Sky” after his World War I experience as an ace, insisted that the stalags holding downed airmen be superior to stalls that held infantry. So the AAF decided that any man who flew over enemy territory should be a Sergeant or an officer.

(Ambrose 2001, 86)

References

Ambrose, Stephen E. 2001. The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45. N.p.: Simon & Schuster.

ISBN 0-7432-0339-9