The War of the Cottontails: Memoirs of a WWII Bomber Pilot

First Lieutenant William R. Cubbins was a B-24 pilot in World War II. Serving with the 420th Bombardment Group--called the Cottontails because of the distinctive white tails on the unit's aircraft--under the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, Cubbins was involved in the bombing raids throughout the Balkans in 1944. This recollection adds significantly to our understanding of the details and especially the horrors of aerial bombardment. The author's descriptions of his missions, particularly the operations aga1nst the fiercely defended Ploesti oil installations, are especially graphic. They capture the peril and apprehension, as well as the excitement and heroism, of bombing missions over central Europe. While the bombing activities are well chronicled in "The War of the Cottontails," I found the latter half of the book the most interesting. There Cubbins describes with great' emotive power his experiences as an Axis prisoner of war in Bucharest, Romania. On July 3, 1944, Cubbins flew his B-24 nicknamed "Swashbuckler" on a raid to Giurgia, Romania. His aircraft was shot down and a Romanian peasant captured him almost as his parachute touched the ground. Sent to a POW camp in Bucharest, established at a hastily reconfigured school in the city, Cubbins spent a little less than two months in the camp. During that time Cubbins and his fellow POWs endured repeated bombing raids on the city and plotted unsuccessfully for an escape. When Romania capitulated in late August 1944 changing to the Allied side in the face of onrushing Soviet armies, Cubbins and his fellow POWs were released. They were turned loose in Bucharest to enjoy the hospitality of the city, and the result was a predictable bedlam.Because of this senior Allied officers rounded up the ex-prisoners and arranged for their removal to Italy. They moved their troops to the Popesti Airdrome, a few miles from the city. By the evening of August 29, 1944, Cubbins writes, over 1,000 ex-POWs were at the airfield. The American senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel James A. Gunn III, and Prince Constantin Cantacuzene of the Romanian Air Force flew in his ME-109, which had been repainted with American flags, to Italy. Gunn arranged for B-17s to travel to Popesti to pick up Cubbins and the other ex-prisoners. By the first part of September 1944 these prisoners had been returned to American bases in Italy. Cubbins, and presumably most of the rest of his fellow POWs, were then sent back to the United States. This book is one of the better memoirs in the chronicle of POW life in World War II. Well-written and insightful "The War of the Cottontails" is an unusually detailed and vivid account of one officer' s experiences in World War II. Cubbins has produced a fine book that will be permanently useful to academics and, more important, interesting to non-specialists.

THIS IS A GREAT READ-MY DAD WAS A COTTONTAIL-I COULDNT PUT THIS DOWN-HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!