In February 1943, a group of journalists including a young wire service correspondent named Walter Cronkite and cub reporter Andy Rooney clamored to fly along on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. Seven of the sixty-four bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he d thought through a lede. I think I m going to say, mused Cronkite, that I ve just returned from an assignment to hell. Assignment to Hell tells the powerful and poignant story of the war against Hitler through the eyes of five intrepid reporters."