After completing the transition from their war-weary B-17 Flying Fortresses to the long-range B-24 Liberators, the 43rd Bomb Group remained in the vanguard of Southwest Pacific heavy bomber operations. The 63rd Squadron aircrews became the Snoopers, trained to operate secret, radar-equipped B-24s which could find and sink Japanese ships moving under the cover of darkness. As the war accelerated across New Guinea and ultimately to Japan, the 64th, 65th and 403rd Squadrons carried out armed reconnaissance and strike missions across the islands of the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia), the Philippines and Formosa (now Taiwan) and Japan itself, including bombing raids over Borneo that shut down the Balikpapan oil refineries for six months. Providing a standout perspective to this history is co-author Col. James T. Pettus, Jr., the unit’s Group Commander from August 1944 to the end of the war. He was one of the airmen who made the first authorized American landing in Japan after the surrender, and here he recounts this story in full. Other eyewitness accounts include an unbelievable feat of blind navigation to save the crew of a crippled B-24, the explosion of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki, a night attack on the 43rd’s airbase by Japanese commandos and the eventual friendship between an American and the Japanese kamikaze pilot who almost killed him in 1944. This book is illustrated with over 400 photos, including a previously unpublished photograph of the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. A 32 page color photography and illustration section highlights some of the most elaborate aircraft nose art in the Pacific Theater and features 32 color profiles of B-24 aircraft including close-up, detailed views of artwork, as well as four paintings by aviation artist Jack Fellows.

464 pages