Thomas McKelvey Cleaver: The Bridgebusters - Joseph Heller, Catch-22 and the 57th Bomb Wing

Catch-22 is one of my favourite books. My battered paperback copy lives on my bedside table. I have the fancy Folio Society edition on the shelf too. As an unashamed B-25 nut, I do bang on about how the Mike Nichols adaptation, written by Buck Henry, basically saved all the flying B-25s we still have. But, how much of it is true? Heller certainly always maintained he had made it up. Author, historian and screenwriter Thomas McKelvey Cleaver took a look into Heller's war and the 57th Bomb Wing for his book The Bridgebusters, which is finally getting a UK release. Tom found that fact and fiction are a lot closer than Joe Heller ever admitted to.

You can buy Thomas McKelvey Thomas' The Bridgebusters: The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing at our Bookshop here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/11015/9781684513635

Tom's book on the USAAF's attacks on the Gothic Line, Gothic Line 1944-45: The USAAF starves out the German Army, part of Osprey's Air Campaign series can be found here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/11015/9781472853417

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