MIDNIGHT FLYERS: Secret Missions with French Resistance (Reel American History)

MIDNIGHT FLYERS: Secret Missions with French Resistance (Reel American History)

The Untold Story of the Shadow War That Made D-Day Possible On June 6, 1944, as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, a secret squadron of American bomber crews was completing their most dangerous mission yet—one that history would forget for over fifty years. They were the Carpetbaggers, and they had spent months flying alone through Nazi-occupied Europe in black-painted B-24 Liberators, delivering weapons, supplies, and hope to resistance fighters waiting in the darkness below. While their brothers-in-arms flew in thousand-plane formations protected by fighters, the Carpetbaggers flew solo at treetop height, navigating by moonlight and river bends, guided only by resistance bonfires that could just as easily be German traps. They dropped weapons to the French Maquis, delivered radios to Norwegian saboteurs, and inserted Allied agents who would coordinate the underground armies that rose up to support the D-Day invasion. Operating from a secret airfield in England, these ordinary young Americans—former teachers, farmers, and factory workers—pioneered techniques that would become the foundation of modern special operations. Flying modified bombers stripped of armor and painted matte black, they faced a terrifying 20% casualty rate. One in five never came home. Those who survived were sworn to secrecy about their missions, their heroism classified and hidden from history. Now, through declassified documents, never-before-seen photographs, and interviews with the last surviving veterans, Matthew Harrison Clarke brings to light the extraordinary story of Operation Carpetbagger. Based on five years of intensive research across American, British, and French archives, Midnight Flyboys reveals how a small group of Americans flying through darkness helped arm the resistance movements that would tie down thirty German divisions during the liberation of Europe. From the first terrifying low-level flights over occupied France to the desperate pre-D-Day surge that saw crews flying four missions in forty-eight hours, this is the story of the men who chose to fly alone into the night, carrying democracy's arsenal to those who refused to surrender. They called themselves the Moon Flyers. The Nazis called them Terror Fliers. History forgot them entirely. Until now.