The Fighting Grasshoppers : US Liaison Aircraft Operations in Europe, 1942-1945

From the dustjacket: "In total some 3 000 American liaison aircraft - mainly Piper L-4 Cubs and Stinson L-5 Sentinels - served in Europe yet no in depth account of their activities has ever been published. Although unarmed and unarmoured they were used extensively on operational missions by both the USAAF and Army Ground Forces. With the USAAF in Europe they carried out low level reconnaissance and front line courier duties with nine liaison squadrons of the Ninth Air Force; this book relates in detail the activities of these units for the first time. With Army Ground Forces liaison aircraft served as Air Observation Posts with the Field Artillery; in this capacity it has been said that a single Air OP controlling the fire power of an entire Division could bring a greater weight of explosives to bear on a target than any other aircraft of the Second World War. ?With the exception of the atomic bomb carrying B-29 Superfortress no other single aircraft had the destructive capability of the diminutive Piper Cub."