With the Possum and the Eagle: The Memoir of a Navigator's War Over Germany and Japan

Possum was General Haywood Hansell; Eagle, General Curtis LeMay. Ralph Nutter was a student at Harvard Law when Pearl Harbour occurred. A few weeks later he was in the Army Air Corp headed to navigator school. (A few years later he was the only survivor of his 22 fellow graduates.) A few months later and he was in England as a navigator on a B-17. In an incident where he knew where they were and none of the others did, Eagle made him the lead navigator of the group. As the European was was winding down, he was transferred to the Pacific and B-29's. Again he was made lead navigator. Eventually LeMay was sent to the Pacific and Nutter returned to work with him. This book is both a story of the war, and a story of leadership in war time. His insights on LeMay are enlightening and impressed me. LeMay's general reputation is a lot lower than that held by Mr. Nutter.

Although we had to wait until after General LeMay's death, we finally find within "With the Possum and the Eagle" the real story of the leadership of General Curtis LeMay. If you're interested in the history of World War II and the significant role aviation had in both the European and Pacific campaigns, Ralph Nutter's account is difficult to put down. Nutter's close proximity to senior aviation leadership during the war gives the reader a rare glimpse into what those wartime leaders faced and the decisions they had to make vis-a-vis both logistical and environmental constraints to operations. A superb account.

Reads like a good, fast paced novel. Exciting, building chronicle of the air war over Europe and the Pacific. Explains with starteling clarity the cockpit horrors that left no alternatives to the area bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. Makes it very clear that the A-Bombs were redundant and unnecessary. A terribly real sense of our "losing years" and the desperate process of a war of attrition. The author, being one of only two survivors of his navigator's class of 22, lets us glimpse the terror and the heroism of an air war where victory would finally go to the combatant who had more young men to "expend"...