Book excerpt: James "Jim" Davis piloted a B-24, as part of the 8th Air Force, on nearly thirty missions in the European Theatre during World War II. He flew support missions for Operations Cobra and Market Garden and numerous bombing missions over occupied Europe in the summer and fall of 1944, attacking enemy airfields, airplane factories, railroad marshalling yards, ship yards, oil refineries, and chemical plants. While he and his crew survived without serious injuries, they witnessed the destruction of many of their friends' planes and experienced serious damage to their own plane on several occasions.