This new volume from Osprey is the story of the creation, development and operation of the Eighth Air Force VIII Fighter Command that protected the B-17s and B-24s in the skies over occupied Europe. Between August 19, 1942, and the end of operations over Germany on May 5, 1945, the 15 fighter groups fielded by that command destroyed 9,000 enemy aircraft, in the air and on the ground. 

The Eighth Air Force suffered more casualties, killed and wounded, than entire U.S. Marine Corps did between the invasion of Guadalcanal and the capture of Okinawa in June 1945.

Author Tom Cleaver has collected numerous first-hand accounts over the past 50 years, meeting pilots such as the legendary “Hub” Zemke, Don Blakeslee and Chuck Yeager, as well as interviewing leading Luftwaffe pilots including Adolf Galland, Günther Rall and Walter “Count Punski” Krupinski.

Clean Sweep is a vivid narrative history of the operational force and impact of the VIII Fighter Command, told through accounts gathered from both sides.