A War Story Fit for Christmas

'Midnight Flyboys' is a riveting tribute to the pilots who ferried secret agents into Nazi-occupied Europe

GENERATIONS OF US have now grown up reading or watching stories about the courage and heroism of the “Greatest Generation,” those young men and women who risked their lives in the existential battle against fascism in World War II. Yet, even 80 years after the guns fell silent, new chapters of that vast conflict continue to emerge, reminding us that the war was fought not just on the beaches of Normandy or the islands of the Pacific, but in the shadows.

Bruce Henderson’s captivating new book, Midnight Flyboys, takes us back to those days of danger and glory, illuminating a specific, harrowing campaign that has long remained a footnote in the broader history of the air war. It centers on the operations of the code-named “carpetbaggers”—U.S. Army Air Force pilots who flew modified B-24 bombers on low-altitude, nighttime missions to drop supplies and allied agents behind enemy lines. Central to this story are not just the aviators, but the intrepid spies—many of them women, by the way—who volunteered to hitch rides on these treetop missions, parachuting into the peril of Nazi-occupied Europe.