Book Review: ‘Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII U.S. Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines’

Following the flights, bailouts and survival of World War II US airmen

"Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII U.S. Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines" by Charles E. Stanley Jr.

Imagine flying 30,000 feet above enemy territory during World War II, trying to avoid flak explosions, trying to ensure your bombs hit their intended target, making sure you and your crew have enough oxygen, managing altitude and speed when engines go out, and, if all else fails, trying to give your men enough time and altitude to bail out or enough time to conduct a crash landing.

Charles E. Stanley Jr. in his new book “Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII U.S. Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines,” covers the missions of 13 B-17 and B-24 bomber crews that were stranded behind enemy lines in Sanski Most, located in the now Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. For more than half of the book, Stanley places the reader in the bombers with the crews: from pilot to navigators to gunners. Each new chapter is like a new story, all eventually leading to the same place and the same goal of trying to avoid the Germans and get back to base.

A Suspenseful Journey for Readers

Not only are readers placed in the loud, cramped, and, at least in the case of these 13 crews, ill-fated bombers, but they are placed in the miserable conditions of Sanski Most. Readers follow the survival, as well as deaths, of dozens of Army Air Force members (the Air Force had yet to become its own military division). Along with dealing with injuries sustained from the bailouts, members had to work alongside Serbian military resistance groups, either the Partisans or the Chetniks (depending on where they landed). In the book, members are primarily found and protected by Partisans, who practiced a strict Marxist economy, which, combined with wartime, meant food and medical supplies were scarce.