The Bombers' Story

TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH! (274 pp.)--Beirne Lay Jr. & Sy Bartlett--Harper ($2.75).

Twelve 0'Clock High! is a "novel" about wartime flying that should be dismissed as fiction and read as a document. Written by two 20th Century-Fox screen writers, it could be shot from the cuff by any resourceful director (Hollywood bought it before publication). Its authors were also among the first U.S. flyers to bomb Hitler's Fortress Europe.

Yaleman Beirne Lay Jr. (I Wanted Wings) was commander of the 48th Bomb Group when he was shot down over France (the French underground rescued him and he was back in England three months later). Sy Bartlett, aide-de-camp to General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz, was one of the first U.S. Air Forces men to arrive in England, flew on many a mission over Europe and later over Japan. Their book, for all its embarrassing concessions to scenario requirements, is an exciting, credible record of what was felt and endured by the first U.S. bomber crews to tangle with the Luftwaffe.

When Brigadier General Savage came down to take over the hard-luck 918th Bomb Group, he found an outfit whose morale and fighting efficiency were shot. They had seen too many of their ships and men go down and were pretty sure they weren't accomplishing a thing. Savage changed all that. He did it by singling out the incompetents and cowards by name, leading the group on most of the missions. If his discipline and briefings read like a cross between any army manual and a football pep talk, many a combat man will remember that just such near-Rover Boy leadership paid off in the clutch.

Two dozen pages which describe the climactic mission into Germany (based largely on an account of the Regensburg raid which Lay wrote for the Satevepost) must be close to the best writing about air combat to come out of World War II.

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