American B-17s is early bombing missions over occupied Europe suffered terrible losses in raids that seemed to do little to stop the Nazi war machine. In just seven months between 1942 and 1943, one squadron of the famed 306th Bomb Group suffered casualties at a rate of 76 percent. The war diaries of Dr. Thurman Shuller, Group Surgeon of the 306th, provide an intimate look at what these young American airmen endured during the early days of World War II. Shuller's war diary traces his story from Law Vegas Army Airfield in the summer of 1941-shortly after the young doctor's internship-to Thurleigh, England, and the desperate days of the air war in Europe. The group surgeon character in the celebrated motion picture Twelve O'Clock High was based on Shuller during his time as Group Surgeon of the 306th at Thurleigh, where he struggled to find medical solutions for high-altitude frostbite, oxygen deprivation, combat fatigue, and a growing crisis of hopelessness among the air crews, who understood they would fly missions into Germany and occupied France until they were killed or the war ended. Almost none believed they would survive the war. Shuller campaigned for setting the maximum number of missions for air crews to fly in a combat tour and argued for the elimination of "Maximum Effort" missions that forced airmen back to base from hard-won furloughs and passes. Shuller's descriptions of the journey across the North Atlantic in the nose of a B-17 are vivid and personal, and his accounts about life among the British during the war bring a fresh look at the air war as it emerged from the pleasant meadowlands of East Anglia.