8th AAF stories, author signed pre-published copy

Fly A Big Tin Bird by Ralph L. Peterson, Maj USAF Ret.  P/b, 22 x 28cm.  199pp.  Spiral bound pre-print draft given to a friend c. March 1989 for evaluation.  A collection of true stories about Peterson's, his crew's and others' experiences during WW2.  Peterson flew 32 missions over Germany with the 379th Bombardment Group, 8th AAF.  His stories cover initial flight training through to combat sorties telling it 'as it was'.  The prologue reads:

"Like fishermen, pilots like to tell stories, and like fish stories they often improve with the telling. However, in the days in which these accounts took place, if a storyteller got carried away and the credibility of his tale became questionable, his audience had a very effective way of putting him down.  In unison they would interrupt 'And there I was at thirty thousand feet flying flat on my back and hanging by my jock strap.'
I suppose every man views the universe from a different point of which he is the center.  In war, when events move so rapidly and the participant runs the gauntlet of life with such uncontrollable intensity, this fact becomes violently true. The individual experiences more of the experiences of life in one month of combat than in an entire lifetime of normal living. Fear, despair, horror, hate, love and passion reach incredible highs and lows as the person is swept along in the swirling violence of war. Each man sees only a small part of the big scene, of course, but this part becomes a very personal thing to him and it is etched into his memory forever should he survive.
This then, is my war. The stories that I have tried to put down here for posterity, if posterity is interested, are incidents that happened to me personally or to friends and acquaintances in the old Army Air Corps during World War II. I have taken the liberty of changing the names of some individuals to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent.  Otherwise, these stories are true, HONEST."

Shows use and wear but in perfectly readable condition.  Signed by the author.  This book was later published by Trafford in 2000.  Stock code P24215A-285.