THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE FLAK ALLEY... GROWING from a few squadrons into two mighty air forces, American air power played its full share in the Mediterranean victories. Targets lay in Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Roumania, Czechoslovakia, and Germany and the 12th and 15th air forces took them as they came. As well as tactically supporting the ground troops, American airmen flying from Mediterranean bases participated in the great campaigns which crushed the Luftwaffe, strangled the German oil industry, and crippled the German transportation system. For the men who flew the planes those missions meant sweating out flak and enemy fighters. For the men who kept the planes in the air there were long hours of work and long hours of waiting. The lines of blasted German tanks and trucks, the demolished bridges, flattened railroad yards, and battered factories testified to fhe kind of job they did.

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