Many volunteered to fly again even though regulations prohibited it. Upon return to friendly lines, these men were often able to provide valuable intelligence about enemy troop dispositions and civilian morale. The fortunate connected with one of the established escape routes to Spain or Switzerland or across the English Channel, or they hooked up with the underground resistance or friendly civilians. Most faced the daunting task of escaping on foot across hundreds of miles.
If an airman abandoned his uniform for civilian garb, he forfeited Geneva Convention protections. German soldiers and Gestapo agents hunted down airmen as well as civilians who dared help them. Civilians might or might not be trustworthy. They had received escape-and-evasion (E & E) training, and some were lucky enough to land with their E-&-E kits-but all bets were off once they hit the ground. Drawing on tens of thousands of pages of mostly untapped documents in the National Archives, Michael Lee Lanning tells the story of these courageous airmen. These men proudly called themselves the Blister Club. Against the longest of odds, nearly 3,000 airmen made it to the ground alive, evaded capture, and escaped to safety. Of the crews aboard, 26,000 men were killed, while 30,000 survived being shot down only to be captured and made prisoners of war. During World War II, some 10,000 American bombers and fighters were shot down over Europe.
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