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Summary: Honoring the men and boys who flew the Liberator.....
Review: When most people think of the American strategic bombing offensive against Germany during World War II, usually they see in their imagination the graceful lines of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses of the Eighth Air Force. Hollywood epics such as Twelve O'Clock High, Command Decision and Memphis Belle reinforce our collective memory of the Flying Forts taking off from Britain on their perilous daylight raids over Hitler's Third Reich, risking life and limb and machine to destroy Germany's industrial capacity and help hasten the end of the war.While the B-17 did, indeed, contribute to the Allied victory in Europe, its dominant role as the U.S. Army Air Force's strategic bomber was a creation of public relations and the media's attention on the "sexy" Flying Fortress. The true workhorse of the daylight bombing campaign over Germany was the ungainly Consolidated B-24, aptly given the name Liberator. As the late Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45, the B-24 was built in greater numbers than the more well-known B-17 (over 18,300 in all) and served in every theater of World War II where American forces were engaged. It had fewer machine guns than the B-17 (10 to the 13 on the Flying Fort), was harder to fly but could carry more bombs and flew slightly faster than the Boeing plane. It was ungainly, with its twin rudder tail and high-mounted Davis Wing, but it did its job well and did much damage to the enemy war effort. But although much space is devoted to the plane and its effects on Hitler's Reich, Ambrose focuses on the pilots and crews that flew the Liberator on hair-raising daylight raids on German targets. His narrative is centered on the wartime career of George S. McGovern, a 22-year-old B-24 pilot who hailed from the state of South Dakota and would, almost 30 years later, run for the Presidency against Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose writes about other B-24 pilots and crewmen, McGovern's evolution from air cadet to bomber pilot flying from Italy over Nazi-held Europe is the heart of this well-written and mesmerizing book. The Wild Blue also sheds some light onto the almost forgotten Italian campaign and the efforts of the Fifteenth Air Force to mount daylight raids over German targets in Austria, Romania and southern Germany. The D-Day landings in Normandy, the stunning Battle for France and the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Allies in Northwest Europe grabbed most of the headlines after June of 1944, and the public relations focus on the Britain-based Eighth Air Force relegated the Italian campaign to almost a backwater status. It is fitting that Ambrose's last major work pays a long overdue tribute to the Fifteenth Air Force and the pilots and crews who flew across the wild blue skies to help liberate Europe from Nazi rule.
Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting reading...and an easy read
Review: I believe some of the comments on this web site were a little too harsh regarding this book. I read lots of WWII history as a hobby and I was quite pleased with the book. It reads well and it's an easy read. Ambrose doesn't go into specific details about the campaign from Italy, but he does give you enough information to realize that these guys fighting from Italy did not have it as "nice" as the boys in England. Living in tents? Unbelieveable. The story is based more around the exploits of McGovern and his crew and a few other personnel flying from Cerignola, Italy. Ambrose tells us, and they tell us in their own words, about their frightening experiences flying against the Germans; their fear of flak; and their experiences in simply flying a B-24. The book may not be as specific as The Mighty Eighth by Roger Freeman, but it is, nevertheless, a very good read. I certainly recommend this book because it deals primarily with experiences in a B-24.
Rating: 
Summary: useless popular history
Review: Ambrose should be ashamed of himself. The excellent author of Nixon and Eisenhower biographies now has edecided that he can get anything by the editors. This is a waste of time. It tries to show us the lives of the men who flew over Germany but ends up more of a memoir and more junky stories then actual history. Why not just publish a diary? he uncovers nothing new here and there are other books on the cubject by authors who actually studied the air war and didnt just 'feel' like writing a history because they are succesful.
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Summary: A Great Story....
Review: Once again, Mr. Ambrose seems to have done his homework in terms of researching military unit records, examining personal journals of soldiers, and weaving all of it into a very interesting overview of a B-24 crew during WW2. The George McGovern connection (leader of B-24 crew)was most interesting. I'm a big fan of Ambrose's books, however I found that Wild Blue lacks the "fluidity of prose" that I enjoyed in Undaunted Courage and other works. I suspect that his end of life health challenges may have had something to do with this...
Yet Wild Blue gives a nice overview of pilot training, what bombing missions were like, living conditions in Italy, and other interesting aspects of the AAF in WW2.
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Summary: I don't understand it
Review: How can this book be called : "The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45", if it's based mainly in a crew flying over ITALY?!!
Rating:
Summary: More memoir than history
Review: WILD BLUE vividly recreates the life of B-24 bomber crews in World War II. Historian Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002) focuses on pilot and future Presidential candidate George McGovern and his comrades from the 15th Army Air Force stationed in Italy from 1944-45. These men trained, worked, and sometimes died while performing hazardous duty under incredible stress. We sense the utter fear they felt from anti-aircraft fire (flak), German fighters, and accidents. We read of their reaction to homesickness, lost comrades, bombs that fell lethally off target, and tent life in the Italian countryside. McGovern's crewmembers salute him as highly skilled, courageous, and steadfast under fire - ironic given later attacks on his patriotism for his anti-Vietnam political views. My father was a B-24 navigator in the marginally less dangerous Pacific theatre, and his tales mirror many that appear in this book. Readers may note that this book is more memoir than general history, and it barely mentions the larger 8th Army Air Force stationed in England.
Some say this volume lacks the polish found in Ambrose' best efforts. Also, the author was accused of plagiarizing certain sections of this book - a charge some believe, but others attribute to jealous colleagues tired of seeing the readable Ambrose on the best-seller list while their academic treatises collect dust. Whichever is the case, WILD BLUE makes pretty good reading.
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Summary: Seems like I've read this before . . .
Review: Would be a good book if he hadn't lifted passages and ideas from WINGS OF MORNING by Thomas Childers . . . Why Stephen?! WHY?!!
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Summary: Off we go into the wild blue yonder!
Review: My father was a flight engineer on B-24 bombers in WWII. He never talked much about the war. I am glad George McGovern and the other airmen who contributed to this book, talked to Stephen E. Ambrose. These are the amazing stories of real men who risked their lives for freedom. A lot of those men never made it home. This book, like Ambrose's better known works, is a wonderful tribute to the men who served.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book, just know what to expect
Review: With only 2 or 3 B-24s still left in the world, this is a valuable book to bring the history of this plane and crew to a new generation. Without it, a lot of oral history would have been lost. Primarily, it is about George McGovern and his crew, although that isn't the entire message. You will learn what it was like to train and fly these enormous airplanes. They weren't pressurized and had no heat. The air would flow through the plane, making the temperature so low that some of the ground crew would pack their beer into a plane to make it frosty cold. The planes were heavy and required the brute strength of the pilot to guide it. In short, the odds of making their 35 required flights were against them. If you are a WWII history reader, I would highly recommend this book. The writing style is another thing to consider, though. The planes don't really get into the air for about 150 pages, so it differs from, say, Ambrose's D-Day book where he begins you in a battle then backs up to feed you the drier history that is necessary to understand the true life plot and characters. Once you start, stay with it. The message is important.
Rating:
Summary: One point of view, but still a good book.
Review: Ambrose's collage of McGovern's narratives is great for those who want to catch a glimpse of the B-24 missions out of Italy. While the book only focuses on McGovern and his crew (for which I have seen much criticism in other reviews), I think the reasoning is that an inclusion of other crews, or even the crews in the Eighth, would cause this volume to be massive. The point of view presented here is one of an excellent pilot who defied the laws of probability and lived through the swarms of flack and ever present accidents to accomplish missions, helping to win the war. No matter which pilot was picked, this book would have remained excellent. Although, this book is not as good as Ambrose's other work, it is still a good book at a great price.
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