During World War II, 300,000 United States Army Air Corps airmen were shot down. Of that number, 51,000 were prisoners of war or listed as missing in action. Bombardiers, positioned in the vulnerable bombardiers' compartment at the front of the aircraft, were in high demand. The authors' fathers were two such bombardiers, one on a B-17 and the other on a B-24. Like so many of the post-war generation, the authors traveled on their own emotional journeys to reconstruct their fathers' WWII experiences. Their fathers fought in the flak-ridden "blue battlefield," and like thousands of other airmen...