Derribado en batalla. Una historia real de supervivencia de la Segunda Guerra Mundial / Lightning Down: a World War II Story of Survival

La desgarradora lucha de un piloto por sobrevivir al horror de Buchenwald

El 13 de agosto de 1944, el joven piloto estadounidense Joe Moser, de solo 22 años, despegó para cumplir su misión número 44 sobre la Francia ocupada. Moser, quien pasó de ser un chico de granja a cumplir su sueño de pilotear un Lockheed P-38 Lightning, una de las armas más letales de las fuerzas aéreas estadounidenses contra la poderosa Luftwaffe alemana, muy pronto descubriría los horrores de la guerra: su avión fue derribado para posteriormente ser capturado y enviado a Buchenwald, el terrible campo de concentración nazi. Ahí, Moser se unió a una comunidad de más de 170 pilotos aliados que al igual que él debieron soportar condiciones infrahumanas y resistir día a día la infame violencia y brutalidad con la que los nazis trataban a los prisioneros de guerra.

Basada en hechos reales y con la intensidad de un thriller, Tom Clavin, autor bestseller del New York Times, cuenta la poderosa historia de Moser y un grupo de valientes que, desafiando todas las probabilidades, escaparon de una muerte segura ideando un plan desesperado en el que lo arriesgaron todo.

Esta es una emotiva e inspiradora narración de audacia y esperanza, un testimonio de la fuerza humana frente al mal absoluto.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

An American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive.

On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story.

Moser was just twenty-two years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the War he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser’s journey into hell began.

Moser and his courageous comrades from England, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere endured the most horrific conditions during their imprisonment... until the day the orders were issued by Hitler himself to execute them. Only a most desperate plan would save them.

The page-turning momentum of Lightning Down is like that of a thriller, but the stories of imprisoned and brutalized airmen are true and told in unforgettable detail, led by the distinctly American voice of Joe Moser, who prays every day to be reunited with his family.

Lightning Down is a can’t-put-it-down inspiring saga of brave men confronting great evil and great odds against survival.