Hell Hawks! is the story of a band of young American pilots and their gritty, close-quarters fight against Hitler's vaunted military. The Hell Hawks were the 365th Fighter Group, three squadrons of fighter-bomber pilots. Beginning just prior to D-Day, June 6, 1944, these pilots fresh from flight training in the United States (most were barely twenty years old), flew in close support of Eisenhower's ground forces as they advanced across France and into Germany.

They flew the rugged, heavily armed P-47 Thunderbolt-affectionately known as "the Jug"-a big tub of a plane that could absorb a pounding from the enemy and still fly back home. Living in tents amid the cold mud of their front-line airfields, the 365th's daily routine had much in common with the GIs they supported. During their year in combat, the Hell Hawks paid a heavy price for the Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. Sixty-nine pilots and airmen died in the fight across the continent. The Group's 1,241 combat missions forged bonds between these men that remain strong sixty years later. Many of them were interviewed for this book, bringing the Hell Hawks' fight against the Reich to life in their own words.

Author Biography

Robert F. Dorr is an Air Force veteran of Korea and retired senior American diplomat. He is the author of 60 books, including Air Force One, a history of presidential aircraft. Bob has written thousands of magazine articles and newspaper columns for Air and Space Smithsonian, Flight Journal, Air Force Times, Aerospace America, and others.