Hell Hawks!: The Untold Story of the American Flyers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht [Paperback]

Hell Hawks! brings to life the air war in Europe, using daily missions of the 365th Fighter Group, 9th US Air Force. My dad flew a P-47 Thunderbolt with the 371st FG, and was lost on a mission over Cherbourg two weeks after the D-Day Normandy Landings. There are many books out that tell the story of our heroes on the beaches. We thirsted for one that describes the 'band of brothers' who took part in the Liberation of Europe from the air. Now we have one! Anyone interested in a detailed history of one group that was so typical of all should have this tome-P47Harry; A very enjoyable book concerning the 365th Fighter Group, IX Tac, 9th AF. The author does an excellent job of covering the unit's campaign throughout the ETO, blending both the "big picture" and personal experiences nicely. My only complaints are that the time line seemed to jump around quite a bit in places and a tendency to throw quite a few names at you in short order, so I found myself re-reading paragraphs to make sure I knew what was going on and who was doing what. But this was a very minor distraction from an overall excellent book that I would recommend highly to anyone interested in the bloody air-to-mud war conducted by the 9th AF... a war that has for far too long been hidden in the shadow cast by the 'Mighty Eighth'-Patrick Foley; As the owner of many of Bob Dorr's books, I have come to expect that anything he produces will be well-researched, well-presented, and very well-written. 'Hell Hawks!' is right up there not only with Dorr's other works but with the best in Be There combat writing. Here's an example: 'The German pilot ran flat-out low...threading the needle between a church steeple and tall brick smokestack. Narrow streets raced under the wings of Kraman's P-47 as he engaged the throttle button triggering emergency water injection. His Pratt & Whitney surged as Kraman squeezed off short bursts at his quarry, the enemy banking abruptly left and right to throw off the American's aim. Across the Rhine, farther into Germany, the pair raced east...'Dorr and co-author Thomas D. Jones (USAF Academy grad, ex-B-52 driver, veteran of four NASA space shuttle flights) also rightly recognize the guys who weren't strapping into the 365th Fighter Group's P-47s: 'The men with stripes on their arms didn't pilot Jugs, but they made warfare in the Jug possible.' We tend to forget that the aircraft of WW II, after all, were just 15 years removed from Lindbergh's Ryan NYP of 1927 but were very complex machines. The authors salute the men with the stripes well. The results of close to 200 interviews of 365th FG veteans, other combat vets, family members, and more, plus four years of research, 'Hell Hawks!' is loaded with the day-to-day details of fighting a tenaciously fierce enemy, demonstrating throughout the book that ground attack combat was a deadly way to earn your flight pay. The authors bring the personalities of the young pilots alive as well as provide a big picture of Allied strategy and the pace of war from D-Day to victory. This is an excellent book not only for military historians but for anyone who enjoys aviation writers at the top of their game. Splendid! -Don Struke;This new look at the group reasserts the history of this important outfit into the public eye. More importantly, the authors captured more personal stories of the 365th members that otherwise would soon be lost forever. For those who don't want to read through a long boring group history, this is the book for you! It is very well written and fast paced. I thank the authors for this wonderful work- Jay Jones; I am really enjoying it. I deals with American P-47 fighter bombers in the European theater. I never realized before how much more dangerous air-to-ground combat is compared to air-to-air. Pretty exciting stuff and very well written- William Selmi --William Selmi

Pilot or crew, the stunning stories found in Hell Hawks! were results of 183 interviews with veterans and their families. The authors were also well-qualified to tell the story of the Hell Hawks, as Robert Dorr is an United States Air Force veteran, retired senior diplomat, and author of many books, while Thomas Jones is also a USAF veteran, a retired astronaut, and a planetary scientist. Their eloquent but yet down-to-Earth language made the book exciting and rewarding to read. Last, but not least, the authors did a great job including additional information to help the readers better understand the grand scheme of things in the war. Well-placed text about the broad Allied front lines on the Western Front, technical specifications of the P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft, and the somber experiences of the visits to the Buchenwald death camp all successfully weaved the experiences described in this book to the war as a whole. While the men of the 365th Fighter Group destroyed individual locomotives and shot down individual aircraft, all their individual actions all added up to move forth the progression of the European War. Hell Hawks! ranks high on my list of recommended books on the air war in WW2....The 'Hell Hawks' is an excellently written and accurate presentation depicting the role of the P-47 pilots from D-Day through the end of WW II. The combination of fascinating aerial accomplishments and statistics are woven together to present an extremely accurate and equally fascinating tale of the role these dedicated and daring pilots played in destroying the vaunted Nazi war machine. It is a 'must read' for anyone interested in World War II as it puts the American dedication and sacfrice into perIn Hell Hawks!, a project four years in the making, Bob Dorr and Tom Jones have crafted a page-turning story of the P-47's indispensable role in winning the war in Europe. It doesn't matter if your interest is strategic, tactical, or personal. It doesn't matter if you're a military historian or if your interest in World War II has recently been sparked by watching Ken Burns' PBS masterpiece, The War. Each perspective, from the names you probably know (Eisenhower, Vandenberg, and perhaps Quesada), to those you don't (Steckel, Charles R. Johnson, and a host of pilots and enlisted men) is brought to light with burning clarity, amazing accuracy, and moving narrative. With the 'big picture' always in mind, the reader can find out what was happening on the flight-line, in the cockpit, and behind the scenes as the 365th Fighter Group moved constantly across the continent to plow the way for the allied advance. The courage and valor of the Greatest Generation is brilliantly brought forward to a new generation. You may already know a lot about the big picture but Hell Hawks! tells you why Major David N. Harmon, the assistant group ops officer has added 'The Luckiest Man Alive' beneath his signature for 63 years. You may have heard that the 'Jug' was a tough airframe In this book you will witness a P-47 cartwheel across a field losing the tail, engine, and both wings in a crash landing less than a quarter mile from the fluid German-American lines in October, 1944. After observing this crash learn why the GIs in a nearby Jeep motioned for the stunned and injured pilot, Lieutenant Bob Hagan, to come to them about 100 yards across a field instead of driving over to pick him up. This book is a must read and a great tributespective-Ryan Downs; Hell Hawks! is a Stephen Ambrose-style history of a 'band of brothers with planes'- a recounting in their own words by Americans who serviced and flew the P-47 Thunderbolt in the European theater of WWII.The rugged, heavily armed P-47, affectionately known as 'the Jug,' was built in greater numbers than any other American fighter, but rarely receives recognition. --WW2db dot com

What a difference one bookstore can make. In less than two years, a small bookstore housed inside the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles airport has sold 13,200 copies of a midlist title published by Minneapolis-based Zenith Press, Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht by Robert F. Dorr and Thomas Jones. The Udvar-Hazy Center is affiliated with the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in downtown Washington, D.C.; aviation and space artifacts that cannot be displayed at the Air & Space Museum are displayed at this facility in northern Virginia. The main bookstore at the Air & Space Museum's Mall location, which Dorr has visited about a half-dozen times to sign, has sold 250 copies of Hell Hawks!, but it is the bookstore at the center where Dorr is a star. During Dorr's initial booksigning at the Udvar-Hazy Center bookstore in the summer of 2008, he sold only a dozen copies of Hell Hawks He has returned to the Udvar-Hazy bookstore 330 times since that initial visit, with signings typically ranging between three and eight hours. The bookstore reports that they regularly order 1,000 copies of Hell Hawks! each month, with Dorr selling as many as 120 books during one signing. The Udvar-Hazy Center bookstore has also sold 1,167 copies of Dorr's previous publication, Air Force One since June 2008. --Publisher's weekly, march, 2010 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"Checkpoints
""The product of four years of research, ["Hell Hawks!"] doesn't merely entertain with 'I was there' tales of intrepid aviators, it takes the reader back to a time of our 'greatest generation, ' and puts one alongside boys just out of their teens, uprooted from their peacetime lives and thrust, for example, into the cauldron of the Battle of the Bulge...gripping, accurate, and engaging." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.