Turning the Tide

Packed with personal accounts of the action, this is a vivid narrative history of the often-overlooked USAAF campaign in North Africa and Sicily in World War II. In 1942, the Western Allies needed to take the offensive against the Axis powers to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union and President Roosevelt ordered his military leaders to support the British in the Mediterranean. This led to the first USAAF units arriving in the Middle East as reinforcements for the British in July and as part of the Operation Torch landings in French Morocco and Algeria in November.

This is the story of how, in only 11 months, the USAAF grew from these small beginnings in to become the senior partner in North Africa, providing aircraft and crews the other Allies were unable to match. In those 11 months, the Axis forces that had controlled almost the entire southern shore of the Mediterranean had been swept from the African continent and the island of Sicily. Using first-hand accounts from pilots and other aircrew, renowned aviation historian Tom Cleaver describes how the USAAF units that landed in 1942 faced an intense baptism of fire in combat with veteran Luftwaffe units, and how the experience gained in the skies over North Africa and Sicily was invaluable in developing the air forces that would dominate the skies over Europe in the latter years of the war.