Damn Lucky: One Man's Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History

Kevin Maurer

Apr 2022 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

From Kevin Maurer—the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning coauthor of No Easy Day—comes the true story of a World War II bomber pilot who survived twenty-five missions in Damn Lucky, “an epic, thrillingly written, utterly immersive account of a very lucky, incredible survivor of the war in the skies to defeat Hitler” (New York Times bestselling author Alex Kershaw).

“We were young citizen-soldiers, terribly naive and gullible about what we would be confronted with in the air war over Europe and the profound effect it would have upon every fiber of our being for the rest of our lives. We were all afraid, but it was beyond our power to quit. We volunteered for the service and, once trained and overseas, felt we had no choice but to fulfill the mission assigned. My hope is that this book honors the men with whom I served by telling the truth about what it took to climb into the cold blue and fight for our lives over and over again.”
—John “Lucky” Luckadoo, Major, USAF (Ret.) 100th Bomb Group (H)

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was a world away from John Luckadoo’s hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. But when the Japanese attacked the American naval base on December 7, 1941, he didn’t hesitate to join the military. Trained as a pilot with the United States Air Force, Second Lieutenant Luckadoo was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group stationed in Thorpe Abbotts, England. Between June and October 1943, he flew B-17 Flying Fortresses over France and Germany on bombing runs devised to destroy the Nazi war machine.

With a shrapnel torn Bible in his flight jacket pocket and his girlfriend’s silk stocking around his neck like a scarf as talismans, Luckadoo piloted through Luftwaffe machine-gun fire and antiaircraft flak while enduring subzero temperatures to complete twenty-five missions and his combat service. The average bomber crew rarely survived after eight to twelve missions. Knowing far too many airmen who wouldn’t be returning home, Luckadoo closed off his emotions and focused on his tasks to finish his tour of duty one moment at a time, realizing his success was more about being lucky than being skilled.

Drawn from Luckadoo’s firsthand accounts, acclaimed war correspondent Kevin Maurer shares his extraordinary tale from war to peacetime, uncovering astonishing feats of bravery during the bloodiest military campaign in aviation history, and presenting an incredible portrait of a young man’s coming-of-age during the world’s most devastating war.

Ratings and reviews

memoir, adaptation, WW2, Europe, air-war, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, nonfiction***** Just staying alive doing daylight raids over Europe in these huge bombers made them into heroes. This is an amazing transformation of a bomber pilot's memoirs into a readable/comprehensible format is filled with demonstrable historical facts from other sources as well. The amount of detail that is served up as if to pilots is astonishingly understandable to this nonpilot. Too many of the pilots and crew were served up as cannon fodder, just like any war ever. Good reading, but one could wish that it was fiction. I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. Thank you!

A gritty and heroic story of a young WWII bomber pilot from Tennessee. Once two young men, John "Lucky" Luckadoo and his friend Sully decided to join the Canadian Royal Air Force to fight the Germans in WWII. The United States had not yet joined the war and they wanted to be fighter pilots. This sounded so exciting to them both. Sully's mother gave permission and he joined the Canadian Royal air Force as a fighter pilot. Lucky's parents would not give permission so he had to wait until after Pearl Harbor and he was old enough to give his own permission and he joined the U.S. Army Air Force and was trained as a bomber pilot. With a bible in his pocket and his girlfriends silk stocking around his neck he went off to war. He soon learned it wasn't as exciting as he had thought. With little training the young men were thrown into action. Many perished and the sights and sounds he heard were horrific for a young man. He prayed each mission and he thought each time he returned that he was damned lucky to still be alive. This is a story of war, of fighting and of one man's life as a bomber pilot. This is the story of John "Lucky" Luckadoo. It is the story of hope, faith, and loss. It is also the story that once you read you will never forget and you will know that war is evil and it is life consuming. It serves no purpose but the loss of life. So many do not wish to share these experiences with us but I appreciate Mr. Luckadoo sharing his life so that we might know how it felt to be a pilot in the middle of a war. Thanks to Kevin Maurer for writing Lucky's story and to Lucky for sharing his story with all of us, to MacMillan audio for publishing it and to NetGalley for making it available to me.

About the author

KEVIN MAURER is an award-winning journalist and three-time New York Times bestselling co-author of No Easy Day, No Hero and American Radical among others. For the last eleven years, Maurer has also worked as a freelance writer covering war, politics and general interest stories. His writing has been published in GQ, Men's Journal, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, and numerous other publications.