This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.

And we tell stories about everything here on this show, and our favorite subject, American history.

And by the way, all of our American history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College.

Go to hillsdale.edu to sign up for their terrific and free online courses.

Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians, and at the core of

his success was his belief that history was biography, history was about people.

Ambrose passed in the year 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at our American stories thanks to those who run his estates.

Here's Stephen Ambrose to tell us the short story from the Wild Blue, the men and boys who flew the B-24s, and he told this story to a riveted audience.

Here's Stephen Ambrose.

The B-24 was built like a 1930s Mac truck, except that it had an aluminum skin that could be cut

with a knife.

It could carry a heavy load far and fast, but it had no refinance.

Steering the four-engine airplane was difficult and exhausting. As until late 1944, there was no

power except the pilot's muscles. It had no windshield wipers.

So the pilot had to stick his head out the side window to see during a rain.

Breathing was possible only by wearing an oxygen mask above 10,000 feet in the altitude.

They were cold and clammy, smelling of rubber and sweat.

There was no heat, despite temperatures that at 20,000 feet and higher got as low as 40 or even 50 degrees below zero.

The wind blew through the airplane like fury, especially from the waste

gunners' windows, and whenever the Bombay doors were open, the oxygen mask often froze to the

wearer's face. If the men at the waist touched their machine guns, with bare hands the skin froze to the metal.

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