Thomas McKelvey Cleaver: The Heroic True Story Behind The ‘Catch-22’ Bomb Wing

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, author of The Bridgebusters: The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXm host Stephen K. Bannon to discuss his new book.

The men of the 57th Bomb Wing flew out of Corsica during World War II and bombed vital bridges throughout Italy to sabotage German supply routes. Their missions were dangerous and never-ending. One bombardier in the wing was a young New Yorker named Joseph Heller, who would later turn his experience into the classic 1961 war novel Catch-22. Now aviation historian Thomas McKelvey Cleaver takes a closer look at the real-life men of the 57th, whose camaraderie in the face of death inspired the raucous cast of heroes and antiheroes in Catch-22.

“Essentially, they won the war in Italy,” said Cleaver, when asked about the group’s accomplishments, describing the harrowing missions they were tasked with flying one after another and how they coped with it. “Mostly what they did was they didn’t think about it,” said Cleaver. “The guys that I talked to said you thought about ‘the’ mission, you didn’t think about the next one. You thought about the one today and you thought about everything else.”

There’s more information available on the author, the book and upcoming promotion here.

The newest aviation history book by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, The Bridgebusters: The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing, will be released in hardcover on May 9th, 2016! [More]

Hardcover copies of my last book, Fabled Fifteen, signed by the author and Jim Duffy, the last living ace who scored at both the Marianas Turkey Shoot and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, are available for $40.00 (which includes shipping in the USA). Please click here to contact the author for details.

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