Packed with personal accounts of the action, this book details the operations of the USAAF’s overlooked XV Fighter Command that protected the bombers during the campaign against the Romanian oil fields in World War II.

Formed in the fall of 1943 from the strategic bomber units of the Ninth and Twelfth Air Forces, the Fifteenth Air Force was intended to take advantage of the better weather in Italy and southern Europe to bring increased pressure on Germany. However, it rapidly became known as the “The Forgotten Fifteenth,” as its achievements were overshadowed by the air war fought over Germany by the Eighth Air Force.

Nevertheless, the Fifteenth Air Force’s contribution to Allied victory was crucial, and in Bloody Skies renowned aviation historian Tom Cleaver relates how the B-17s, B-24s, and their escorting fighter groups from the XV Fighter Command took on the campaign against the Romanian oil fields at Ploeşti. Its loss in summer 1944, combined with the attacks on Germany by the Eighth Air Force, was the body blow that ended any chance for the German armed forces to do more than delay the inevitable.

This new history of the campaign combines an engaging overview of events with first-person accounts of the fighter pilots of such famous units as the Red Tails – the Tuskegee Airmen – the 82nd Fighter Group, and the 325th’s “Checkertail Clan,” to tell the story of the Fifteenth’s air war.

Packed with personal accounts of the action, this is a vivid narrative history of the often overlooked USAAF campaign in North Africa and Sicily in World War II.

In 1942, the Western Allies needed to take the offensive against the Axis powers to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union. With planning for a cross-Channel invasion beset by logistical and operational difficulties, in May President Roosevelt ordered his military leaders to prepare to support the British in the Mediterranean. This led to the first USAAF units arriving in the Middle East in July, firstly as reinforcements for the British and later as part of the Operation Torch landings in French Morocco and Algeria in November.

This is the story of how, in only 11 months, the USAAF grew from these small beginnings in North Africa to become the senior partner in the region, providing aircraft and crews the other Allies were unable to match. In those 11 months, the Axis forces that had controlled almost the entire southern shore of the

Mediterranean had been swept from the African continent and the island of Sicily – thanks in no small part to the efforts of the USAAF.

Using first-hand accounts from pilots and other aircrew, renowned aviation historian Tom Cleaver describes how the USAAF units that landed in Morocco faced an intense baptism of fire in combat with veteran Luftwaffe units, and how the experience gained in the skies over North Africa and Sicily was invaluable in developing the air forces that would dominate the skies over Europe in the latter years of the war.