1Golden Boy Had Nine Black Sheep
General Savage believes that Gallagher, part of a military family, is too quick to abort missions at the first sign of engine trouble. Savage rides Gallagher hard, assigning him a crew of slackers and misfits and ordering Gallagher to paint the name "Leper Colony" on his plane. Gallagher turns his crew is to an efficient outfit but he despises Savage and wants to do anything to get a transfer.
3The Men and the Boys
General Savage decides to court martial a pilot, Captain Ritchie, who disobeyed a direct order and left the bomber formation to protect a friend, Lt. Lockridge, and his crew who have bailed out of their crippled B-17. Because everyone else considers Ritchie a hero, Savage's severe action instigates a fall in morale and hostile feelings among his men. Savage must convince his troops that while Ritchie's deed may have saved the lives of the 7 men, it also jeopardized the security of the remaining 200 men in the Group. This is especially difficult for Lockridge, who must weigh his gratitude to his friend against the inescapable reality of Savage's argument.
4The Sound of Distant Thunder
5The Climate of Doubt
When an old flame, who happens to be a member of the French Resistance, shows up in England asking for help, General Crowe concocts a bombing mission to show American support for the Underground movement. Because of the limited strategic value of the target, however, he can't get approval as a stand-alone operation, so he quietly tacks it on as a secondary target to another mission, much to Savage's consternation. The added objective will significantly intensify the danger to his B-17s for a very dubious benefit. Crowe is adamant, but is it because of his belief in the long-term reward, or his devotion to his Parisian lover?
8The Hours Before Dawn
Returning to his base with vital information about a pending mission, General Savage is forced to take cover from a Luftwaffe bombing raid in the home of an attractive widow with a frivolous attitude and a serious self-esteem issue. As the raid ends, he prepares to resume his trip, only to be blocked by a German airman shot down during the attack. Now he must deal with an enemy bent on escape at any cost and a woman who is not particularly sympathetic to his plight. As precious time ticks away, his bomber group prepares to take off on a mission that, without his information, will be a massacre roughly equivalent to Custer's Last Stand.
10Interlude
Suffering from fatigue, General Savage is ordered to take leave and decides to pay a visit to sunny Scotland. On his way, he repeatedly bumps into a female British officer, Ann Macrae, who is returning to her home - accidental encounters that become increasingly awkward. Naturally, their animosity slowly turns to grudging tolerance, and then to fondness on the way to true affection. Against his better judgment, Savage finds himself falling in love, and Macrae is caught in the same web. Unfortunately, she is hiding a secret that will cast a terrible shadow over their budding relationship.
11Here's to Courageous Cowards
Corporal Lawrence, a mild-mannered desk clerk, stows away aboard a B-17 to try his hand as a gunner and actually turns out to have a good eye. Major Morse, the pilot and group commander when Savage isn't flying, is so impressed, he urges Lawrence to get accelerated training and become a full time crew member. To his dismay, Lawrence balks at the offer, and Morse subsequently learns that he was a conscientious objector before he enlisted. With a distinguished service record and a penchant for driving himself and his crews hard in battle, Morse is infuriated with Lawrence and pressures him to become a combatant. But Morse must also deal with the enormous pressure he has placed on himself as it starts to erode his judgment and cost the lives of more and more men.
12Soldiers Sometimes Kill
Scotland Yard suspects Gen. Savage of murdering a model, when his lighter is found in her flat and he claims amnesia after being felled in a Luftwaffe raid on London. Savage also seemed pretty bombed himself from his night out, but instead of resting up on base eating bonbons or lawyering up, he returns to Berkeley Square to cooperate with the bobbies. The workaholic fly-boy's stout conscience and fuzzy brain struggle for the truth.
14An Act of War
Under heavy pressure to find a well concealed target in France, Savage flies a stripped down B-17 (no bombs, guns, or crew) on a desperate photo-reconnaissance mission. After he is shot down, he is discovered by a Frenchman who tries to kill him, but Savage turns the table, purely in self-defense, and dispatches his attacker. Unaware that his action was witnessed by the man's son, he later meets the boy and pleads for help in getting his vital information back to England. Instead, the boy turns him over to a group of French civilians who despise the Americans for bombing their homeland, and now they want to make Savage pay for those perceived atrocities as well as the death of the boy's father.
15Those Who Are About to Die
Savage's elite squadron is picked for a dangerous, top secret bomb run, but his men start to crack waiting for fog to lift over the English Channel, while they are confined to base. One of his best pilots, Lt. Lockridge, is recovering from hepatitis, waiting to complete his 25th mission, which will get him sent back to the U.S. Gen. Savage, the medical officer, and the nurse who loves Lockridge debate: is Lockridge malingering, pretending to be A-OK, or is he too ill to fly on the mission in which 1/3 are expected not to come back from ?
16In Search of My Enemy
Due to illness and injury, including his own bum knee, General Savage finds himself short of qualified pilots to lead bombing missions. Help arrives in the person of Major Peter Gray, a highly experienced man with just the right credentials, but also some lingering pains from his own earlier mishap. Complications arise when Savage discovers that Gray's wife, Ann, is his former fiancee and that he still has strong feelings for her. Stressed by the awkward situation, he assigns Gray to command a mission that is supposed to be a milk run, only to discover too late that the Luftwaffe is laying in wait. The mission turns into a slaughter, and though he survives to return, Gray is convinced Savage is trying to get him killed so he can have another chance with Ann.
19Faith, Hope and Sergeant Aronson
Gen. Savage returns from a mission mortally wounded, requiring a delicate operation to remove shrapnel endangering his heart; an operation Dr. Kaiser doesn't feel confident to perform. While waiting for a specialist, Savage is placed in a ward next to Sgt. Aaronson who has just lost his lifetime friend to battle wounds and is also quickly losing his faith in God. Savage tries to talk him out of his closing shell, but the Sergeant slips deeper into melancholy, that is until he meets someone who could use a little of his disappearing faith.
23The Trap
A pilot's worst nightmare - buried underground with no guarantee of ever seeing the open sky again. Gen. Savage and a group of Londoners are trapped in a cellar during an air raid, while the only man who knows they are there is wounded and incoherent. Savage has to deal with an elderly widow facing true fear for the first time, a young coal miner with a phobia about being buried alive, a charlatan confronted by the lies behind his life, and a girl about to become an unwed mother. Oh, and there is one other occupant of this hell under earth - an unexploded, ticking time bomb.
24End of the Line
Joe Gallagher returns to the storyline of the 918th with a promotion to Major. Wracked by guilt for the death of a friend who took his place on a mission, Gallagher volunteers for a dangerous assignment to support commandos deep behind enemy lines. He also accepts responsibility to notify the intended wife of the dead man, an assignment that may prove even more dangerous as she turns out to be a manipulative schemer bent on snaring him in her web of deceit.
26Mutiny at Ten Thousand Feet
31P.O.W.: Part Two
Thanks to a carefully planned diversion, Savage and several others are able to effect a successful escape from the prison camp, even using Col. Richter as a hostage to make good their getaway. However, their effort to flee Germany takes an ominous turn when Richter is wounded in a shootout with pursuing soldiers. If the escapees leave him behind alive, he will give away their plans, but now he appears to be too badly hurt to travel and Savage's chivalry precludes the most obvious alternative. With a definite strategy in mind, and help from the local underground, Savage must find a way to implement his plan without allowing Richter to become a liability.
