Thomas Cleaver

This book details the operations of the USAAF’s overlooked XV Fighter Command that protected the bombers during the campaign against the Romanian oil fields in World War II. Formed in the fall of 1943, the Fifteenth Air Force was popularly known as the “The Forgotten Fifteenth,” as its achievements were overshadowed by more glamorous exploits of the Eighth Air Force in the air war over Germany. Nevertheless, the Fifteenth’s contribution to Allied victory was crucial, and a vital part of that was the role played by the escorting fighter groups from the XV Fighter Command who protected the B-17s and B-24s from the Luftwaffe in the skies over Romania. In this new history of the campaign, renowned aviation historian Tom Cleaver tells the story of the Fifteenth’s air war through first-person accounts of the fighter pilots of the Fifteenth Fighter Command, including such famous units as the Red Tails – the Tuskegee Airmen – the 82nd Fighter Group and the 325th’s “Checkertail Clan,” and with his ability to place wartime events in their greater context.

Packed with personal accounts of the action, this is a vivid narrative history of the often-overlooked USAAF campaign in North Africa and Sicily in World War II. In 1942, the Western Allies needed to take the offensive against the Axis powers to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union and President Roosevelt ordered his military leaders to support the British in the Mediterranean. This led to the first USAAF units arriving in the Middle East as reinforcements for the British in July and as part of the Operation Torch landings in French Morocco and Algeria in November. This is the story of how, in only 11 months, the USAAF grew from these small beginnings in to become the senior partner in North Africa, providing aircraft and crews the other Allies were unable to match. In those 11 months, the Axis forces that had controlled almost the entire southern shore of the Mediterranean had been swept from the African continent and the island of Sicily. Using first-hand accounts from pilots and other aircrew, renowned aviation historian Tom Cleaver describes how the USAAF units that landed in 1942 faced an intense baptism of fire in combat with veteran Luftwaffe units, and how the experience gained in the skies over North Africa and Sicily was invaluable in developing the air forces that would dominate the skies over Europe in the latter years of the war.

A vivid history, packed with first-hand accounts, of the US Eighth Air Force''s VIII Fighter Command from its foundation in 1942 through to its victory in the skies over Nazi Germany.On August 7, 1942, two major events occurred on opposite sides of the planet. In the South Pacific, the United States went on the offensive with the First Marine Division landing on Guadalcanal. In England, 12 B-17 bombers of Eighth Air Force bombed the Rouen–Sotteville railroad marshalling yards in France. While the mission was small, the aerial struggle that began that day would ultimately cost the United States more men killed and wounded by the end of the war in Europe than the Marines would lose in the Pacific War.Clean Sweep is the story of the creation, development and operation of the Eighth Air Force Fighter Command and the battle to establish daylight air superiority over the Luftwaffe so that the invasion of Europe could be successful.Thomas McKelvey Cleaver has had a lifelong interest in the history of the fighter force that defeated the Luftwaffe over Germany. He has collected many first-hand accounts from participants over the past 50 years, getting to know pilots such as the legendary “Hub” Zemke, Don Blakeslee and Chuck Yeager, as well as meeting and interviewing leading Luftwaffe pilots Adolf Galland, Gunther Rall and Walter “Count Punski” Krupinski. This story is told through accounts gathered from both sides.

Filled with personal accounts of the action, this book details the USAAF’s tactical and strategic campaigns in the skies over Italy in World War II.With the defeat of the Germans and Italians on Sicily in mid-July 1943, the focus of the war in the air shifted toward the battle for the Italian mainland itself. This campaign took place in the context of the coming invasion of northwest Europe, with many of the best units from the North African and Sicilian campaigns withdrawn to prepare for the new front, while those units that remained had a lower priority for replacements of men and material. Despite these difficulties, the air war in the Italian campaign is a study in the successful application of tactical air power. Mediterranean Sweep describes how USAAF forces, alongside Free French, Italian Co-Belligerent, British and Commonwealth units, and even a squadron of the Brazilian Air Force, took the war to the Axis in both the fighter-bomber war and Operation Bingo, the successful bombing campaign to withhold supplies from the German forces fighting on the Gothic Line. Building on the story of the USAAF in North Africa and over Sicily told in his previous work Turning The Tide, renowned aviation expert Tom Cleaver uses a wide range of first-hand accounts from American, Allied, German, and Italian pilots and other aircrew to bring to life the bitter struggle in the skies over Italy from mid-1943 through to the end of World War II.