Mighty Eighth Air Force

In honor of the 80th anniversary of the start of the Combined Bomber Offensive, Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours is excited to announce the Mighty Eighth Air Force Tour – Reaping the Whirlwind: REF Bomber Command, the USAAF 8th Air Force, and the strategic bombing campaign of Europe.

From 1943-45 tens of thousands of incredibly brave young men were involved in a deadly experiment. The airmen of RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF 8th Air Force were thrown into the teeth of Axis air defenses to see if, for the first time in history, an enemy nation could be brought to its knees through strategic bombing.

For the next 29 months, streams of Allied bombers pummeled occupied Europe. Three million tons of ordnance was dropped on Europe, and Germany’s greatest cities were left in rubble. Eighty years after the start of the combined bomber offensive, historians still argue about the effectiveness of this massive bombing campaign. What there can be no argument about, however, is the incredible bravery of the thousands of young airmen, more than 150,000 of whom made the supreme sacrifice,

Guests on the Mighty Eighth Air Force Tour will have an opportunity to explore this most important campaign of World War II in unparalleled detail; studying the people, visiting the aircraft, and exploring the places that made history.

Tour Highlights

Historians