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Title: The Munster Raid: Before and After by Ian L. Hawkins ISBN: 0-917678-49-4 Publisher: Food & Nutrition Pr Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $32.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: You Are There
Comment: Ian Hawkins is an Englishman who grew up in WW II surrounded by airfields in Suffolk, from which many of the 8th Air Foce flew their missions to Germany. All 426 pages are filled with stories of heroism, fear,horror and dogged determination of young men doing their duty with a professionalism way in excess of their years. This book puts the reader in all the positions of each crewman to the point where you begin to realize just what it took to complete a daylight mission in the early days of daylight bombardment.

It is a worthy tibute to the men who flew this mission, their ground crews, and the many gallant members of the French, Belgian and Dutch Resistance Organizations who helped those that were shot down, to escape capture via the "Comete Escape Line" to neutral Spain.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: "Never has a writer managed to capture the intensity of aerial combat with a clarity that puts the reader in the cockpit in what was one of the costliest raids of the war".

I highly reccomend this book. When you read it, and if you are lucky to ever encounter anyone who flew on this mission, you will be privileged to be able to talk with him almost on an equal basis. You will feel as if you had been on the mission based on the incredible detail of it as it unfolded, as told by Ian Hawkins. Buy, read and enjoy

Ken Wright

Rating: 5
Summary: The Munster Raid: Before and After
Comment: In the annals of Aerial Warfare, distinct names bring a chill to the bone, Schweinfurt, St Nazaire, Wilhelmshaven, and Berlin (Big B). But on October 10th 1943 the 13th Combat Wing of the 8th Air Force engaged in one of the fiercest running air battles of World War 2. The target for today was MUNSTER. Ian Hawkins has chosen this particular battle as the basis for this excellent book. "The Munster Raid: Before and After" gives the reader a chronological view of the events leading up to the Mission and the aftermath. Unlike other books of this genre, the author puts you in the barracks, the breifing rooms, the hardstands, the cockpit, and the POW camps. You feel the tightness in the pit of your stomach as the fighters come through the formation, you witness the loss of a buddy as his plane slides out of formation or evaporates into thin air from a direct hit. You hear the concerned voices of Pinetree and the disbelief of a Group Commander as only ONE of his planes return. How does he accomplish this? Simple, by letting the combatants tell the story in their own words.

In this, the third edition of his book, Mr Hawkins has included information on the Bremen & Marienburg missions, events leading up to Munster, and the raid which followed it on October 14th, 1943. This book is an essential piece of 8th Air Force history but more importantly, the history of the 100th Bomb Group. On this unfortuate mission 12 aircraft of the 100th failed to return. Only Lt. Robert Rosenthal, with a heavily damaged aircraft, would bring his crew back to Thorpe Abbotts that day. The reader feels the stunned silence and disbelief that hung over the base that day. This book stands as a testament to the resolve the 100th Bomb Group and the 8th Air Force displayed in continuing operations in the face of such events. If you only read one book in your lifetime about the 8th Air Force, make sure it is this one. Reader beware, make sure you have enough time because you will have a hard time putting this book down. Maybe just long enough to wipe the beads of sweat off your brow.

Michael Faley
100th Bomb Group Historian
100th Bomb Group Photo Archives

Rating: 5
Summary: Detailed History of a Momentous Bombing Mission
Comment: The target was Munster, an ancient walled city on the edge of Germany that up until that day had seen comparatively little damage from Allied bombs. But Munster was also a key city in the German industrial machine, and on October 10, 1943, the city was hit by a massive American daylight bombing. The Munster Mission has gone down in history as one of the most brutal aerial battles in history, and rightly so. In 1943, the American heavy bombers did not yet have effective long-range fighter escorts to protect them, and the German Luftwaffe's best pilots still flew. Many would be gone within a year, for unlike the Americans, the German pilots had no maximum number of missions and instead flew until either they were killed or wounded or the war ended. On this mission, the reader is there, flying through flak "thick enough to walk on", watching the lumbering B-17's tumble from the sky and looking for the parachutes, in the cockpits of American and German planes, in the streets of Munster below as the city is pounded by the bombs, trying desperately to escape from a plummeting plane, floating in sudden silence over the city under a parachute, trying to evade capture once on the ground, or trying to limp back to base in England as the ubiquitous English fog begins to hide the airfields. Eminent British historian Ian Hawkins, who as a boy watched the massive American B-17's take off from their base at Framlingham, has put together the definitive history of the Munster Raid. He has recorded the thoughts of individuals who were there that day, both in the air and on the ground, American and German, and woven their stories into an exciting, minute by minute account. At the end, he wraps up the stories by updating the reader on what happened to all the players in the tale after the war, if they survived, and the reader closes the book at last with a vivid picture of this important battle in the skies and the men who fought it, and a renewed appreciation of the courage and sacrifice made by men and women on both sides of the conflict. It is a moving, taut, detailed book, told for the most part in the words of those who were there, and is a must-read for anyone who wants to know what the air war in Europe was like. Highly recommmended and well worth the price.