In a time when tanks and battleships were the proven tools of war, a team of gutsy planners and a bold President of the United States approved a plan to destroy Adolf Hitler's Germany using airplanes ― B-17s and B-24s. It was called strategic bombing, a gutsy leap of faith in an entirely unproven weapon called the bomber on which the fate of World War II hinged. But why were military planners certain that World War II could be won by bombers? Part of Keeney's "Lost Histories of World War II" series, The Strategic Bombing Offensive 1943–1944 is the definitive, in-depth history of the evolution of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany from an idea on paper into a powerful, shock-and-awe tool of war that lasts to this day. In each chapter the vicious air war against the Luftwaffe air and ground defenses unfolds, including the terrible losses to American aircrews which precipitated the massive changes in American air tactics that turned it around until victory was in sight and the final bombs were dropped on Berlin. That is this history, recovered and in print now for the first time since 1945.