Return from Berlin: The Eye of a Navigator

Capa
Univ of Wisconsin Press, 03/07/2003 - 183 páginas
During the summer of 1944, the now-legendary American Eighth Air Force was engaged in a ferocious air battle over Europe to bring the Allies victory over the German Third Reich. This is the story of one B-17 navigator and his crewmates, men who faced extraordinary danger with a maturity beyond their years. This vivid and detailed account of combat flying and its psychological toll also recalls the beginning of Robert Grilley’s development as a painter of international renown, as he spends his off-duty time drawing the peaceful Northamptonshire landscape around Deenethorpe airbase.
Wakened with flashlights on their faces in the predawn hours, he and his crew repeatedly face the Luftwaffe in battles five miles high, flying through flak "so thick you could get out and walk on it." Stretching their stamina to the limits, they succeed time after time in their missions to bomb munitions works, railyards, the Leüna synthetic oil plant at Merseburg in eastern Germany, the V2 rocket research center at Peenemünde on the distant Baltic Coast, and even to strike Hitler’s capital city, Berlin.
But Grilley finds interludes of unexpected grace and restoration on his days off, making serious drawings from nature at the neighboring Yokehill Farm. There he slowly cultivates a friendship with a curious eight-year-old, the lively child Elizabeth, who becomes for the combat flyer a symbol of survival.

No interior do livro

Índice

Myself as an aviation cadet spring 1943 II
11
The 401st Bomb Group H in England at
18
233
22
2
24
4
52
5
58
6
65
8
72
16
116
Interrogation August 1944
122
18
126
83
138
Bombing strike photo railroad marshaling yard Münster
150
24
155
Porter Ham and Robert Grilley September 1992
171
American Strategic Bombing
173

12
88
14
102
Our crew reconstituted as a lead team August 1944
104
Drawing of Elizabeth at Yokehill Farm age eight
179
Direitos de autor

Outras edições - Ver tudo

Palavras e frases frequentes

Acerca do autor (2003)

Robert Grilley is professor emeritus of art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A respected figure painter and teacher, he has shown his work at museums and galleries throughout the United States, including a large retrospective at the Wichita Museum.

Informação bibliográfica