A new book by the famous historian Sergei Plokhy is devoted to a little—known page of the Second World War - the history of the creation and operation of three US Air Force bases in the Poltava region, “where Soviet and American soldiers lived and fought shoulder to shoulder” and from which shuttle bombing of objects in the Axis countries was carried out. There are heroes of big politics who played important roles in the realization of the ambitious plan of shuttle bombing: Franklin Roosevelt, U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman, General Dean, from the Soviet side — Joseph Stalin, People's Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, General Alexey Novikov, but also many thousands of people involved in the daily activities of the bases. During this short time, they received a tremendous experience of interaction and communication, which will affect their entire future life. The uniqueness of the work is given by the use of extensive archival materials of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR (Smersh counterintelligence), previously inaccessible to researchers. This is a microhistory, in which, as in a drop of water, the deliberate doom of an initially brilliant plan was reflected.