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The second half recounts of Walton's visit to the ground her father flew over and walked on in Europe — a trip that adds detail to the first story and becomes a travelogue of new friendships.

The first story is so strong, I would have preferred that Walton integrate details from the second into it and turn Story Two into what moviemakers call "the making of" the book.

But this criticism may be a measure of her success. As the children's book author who lives in Oxford, Ohio, notes in the preface: "I had intended this book to be for his immediate family who were curious about his wartime experiences. It became far more."

Buried beside his wife, Phyllis, in Ferncliff Cemetery in 2004, Thomas Jeffers was a New York native who had followed a friend's lead and come to Dayton to take a machinist's job at Wright Field after the war broke out. There he met Phyllis Finfrock, a young Springfield woman working at NCR, and, even in the growing shadow of war, the two decided to marry.

Enlisting on Sept. 1, 1942, in New York, Jeffers was called up and reported to Columbus on Jan. 29, 1943, and began training with the Army Air Corps at Ellington Field in Houston.

There they endured "the agonizing job of holding down planes on the field in Houston during a powerful hurricane," Walton writes. With winds gusting to 137 mph, "the cadets held the planes down from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m."

After the eye passed, "they turned the aircraft around to the changed wind pattern" and held on as "rain pelted them like small BBs, and the rubber on their rain coats was beaten off."

Jeffers went on to advanced bombardier training at Randolph Field in Big Spring, Texas then to phase training, where he became part of the crew headed by 2nd Lt. Henry Northrop of Batavia, N.Y.

"The Northrop crew, in particular, was very social, and despite the fact the enlisted men and officers were not supposed to fraternize, this crew did.

"As they trained in Casper, (Wyo.,) pilot Northrop continually admonished the enlisted men to salute the officers in public. With big grins, they acceded to his request ..."

From those days, Walton also describes an early morning winter scene that seems right out of the movie "Fargo."

"Mission training began at 5 a.m. in 0° temperatures. Often up at 2 a.m., my mother cooked breakfast before sending her husband off into the cold darkness. He had an old jalopy, and he stopped in the darkness to pick up (copilot Dee) Butler, who was crouched on the corner in the cold waiting for his ride. The car had no heater."

Two of the crew's three married men, Jeffers and Butler would have much in common in the months to come.

When training ended, "Phyllis Jeffers and Mariam Butler, who had followed their husbands through training, returned home to wait out the war and wait for their babies."

Fate delivered the men to the airfields of in southeast England, where the Allied bombing effort was both exacting and suffering a toll.

Walton provides grounding context.

"Morale was getting low northwest of the English Channel just before the Northrop crew arrived. Two weeks before, 13 B-24 Liberators crashed or crash-landed in east Norfolk in one night. Two more were damaged and 38 men were killed.

"Besides that, tours were increased from 30 to 35 missions, and deep penetration raids ranked equal to short missions (in credit)."

After a flight over the English Channel showed them "thousands of ships ... floating like matchsticks" six days after the D-Day invasion, the crew delivered a load of fragmentation bombs to Evreux, France, had their first encounter with flak, and after debriefing "were offered cognac and warm cookies."

On June 17, Jeffers got his first taste of combat death when Red Morley, with whom Jeffers had spent an evening reminiscing about Ohio, did not return from his mission.

"Overnight, Jeffers' and Butler's roommates, Davis, Morely and Hier, were killed in action. The six others on the crew also perished."

Although "there was little time for grief in war," she writes, Walton said her father asked her to look for those names in Books of Remembrance in London, and she found them.

"Each name was there, written in stark black letters against the cream-colored paper."

Soon, new arrivals to the bunkhouse would be sorting through not only the effects of the Morely crew but the Northrop crew.

Assigned to an "all available aircraft" mission, the crew drew the Rhapsody in Junk, which had arrived in January of 1944 from Tulsa and was war-weary after 76 missions.

"Upon his own inspection," Walton notes, "Jeffers pronounced the plane aptly named."

The plane's mission was to bomb Luftwaffe control centers at Fassberg and Stade.

"The target," Walton notes, "was a rocket research station, barracks and an air field."

Walton's description of the plane's last ride is told in great and dramatic detail and includes some of the book's most lyrical writing, including this description of the plane awaiting takeoff.

"Her slick wheels were still chocked as she sat in the English morning ground fog. The aroma of rich earth and sweet-smelling grass, remnants of pre-war England, competed with clouds of choking exhaust. The acrid smell of burnt-engine oil and hi-octane aviation fuel increasingly replaced the earthen traces of summer."

Walton covers the practicalities of flight as well: the danger of forming up in the sky that accounted for one in seven plane crashes during the war; the use of electric suits to fight the -50° temperatures at altitude; the oxygen checks to make sure all the crew remained conscious; the Pepsin gum chewed to keep ear pressure equal on both sides of the eardrum; the bombardier's role in steering the aircraft over the final target; and the threat of enemy fighters that "like black flies in the distance ... could appear at any moment."

But it is amidst the flak — the German abbreviation for Flugzeugabwehrkanone, meaning aircraft gun, Walton explains — that Rhapsody in Junk begins to come apart.

"The crew could see the puffs of black smoke all around as the shells exploded with fury around them. The Liberators dove through flak, reeling and shaking from the hits. Then the No. 1 and 4 engines failed ... A shell hit the same engines, rendering them totally useless."

As Northrop plotted a course for Sweden, hoping to make it to Denmark, where the crew might find aid from the underground, Jeffers and Butler got to work trying to dislodge an armed bomb stuck in the bomb bay.

A letter from Butler that Walton uncovered adds details.

"(Jeffers) and I located a rope, and Jeff was lowered to kicking distance of the bomb" as the air rushed through the open bomb bay.

"A lifetime passed while he kicked time and time again."

He finally succeeded.

As the bail-out bell sounded, "each man had to assess his situation and find a place to bail out that would not result in him being bludgeoned, decapitated or impaled as the plane went out of control," Walton writes.

Not all the crew members would be successful.

As flak "peppered the ship like popcorn," Walton writes, "Gonzales turned and watched as Jeffers dropped down to one knee, bowed his head and clasped his hands in prayer. Then he arose and stood by the camera hatch preparing to bail out at approximately 10,000 feet."

"Rhapsody in Junk" is available from Author House at www.authorhosue.com or by calling (888) 280-7715. List price is $24.95.