Worrybird

Utilizing the voices of the B-24 Liberator "Worrybird" and her crew, the heroic and costly story of the air war over Europe unfolds.

"Can't see how a man can get through 50 missions. Am I capable of the job?"

"Damn I hate that place."

"Stanley, what the hell are you doing here?"

       "Five out of seven ships lost. All four of us slept in the missing boys' tent. Slept on the floor."

These are the diary reflections of three of the ten crewmembers of the B-24 Liberator Worrybird. She was "born" in Dallas, Texas and built for one purpose only - to deliver up to four tons of bombs on Hitler's Nazi war machine. "Worrybird" is the saga of the air war over Europe told not only through the crew who flew her, but also through Worrybird herself, the eleventh "crewmember."

As with her human crew, Worrybird experiences a range of emotions, beginning with terror during their cross-country flight to Florida. She becomes lost over the empty waters of the Atlantic on her way to Africa, almost becoming a casualty before encountering a single Messerschmitt bullet or Flak shell. She and her crew feel despair and utter helplessness after the loss of so many of her fellow B-24s of the 449th Bomb Group, based out of Grottaglie, Italy.

Author Roderick Stanley not only delivers the true tales of missions survived but also the lighter side of war, as Worrybird and her crew temporarily escape the continuously unfolding drama at 20,000 feet. From "egg fry" gatherings in their tent, poker games generously lubricated with Seagram's V.O., meeting the local people during shopping trips into nearby towns, to spending R&R sailing on the blue-green Adriatic, "Worrybird" envelopes all the emotions of their wartime experience.

Intertwining three of Worrybird's officers' diaries with Army Air Corps mission records, Stanley evokes a narrative that is historically accurate while maintaining the prose of an easily read novel.