Media Archives - Page 10 of 22

In Theater: What They Wore

The P-47 Thunderbolt pilot of 1945 wore and carried lots of stuff, and little of it gave meaning to the military term “uniform.” At Metz, France, in January 1945, the group and squadron commanders of the “Hell Hawks” 365th Fighter Group, posed in their gear in front of a wrecked Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190. The men […]

Classics: The Beerfire

Keeping the cold beer flowing By Budd Davisson Does this picture really need explanation? It’s unknown whether the Axis routinely ferried beer to the front lines in drop tanks, but, reportedly, most of the Allied powers did. What’s more, it wasn’t unusual to top off a Mustang’s or Thunderbolt’s drops with beer, then have the […]

Eyewitness to History: A Childhood Interrupted

By W. Joan Hawgood Hall, Former ACW.2 On September 1, 1939, my brother, Berkley, and I were being evacuated from London. Almost everything we owned was in our backpacks that Daddy had made for us, our gas masks in their boxes around our neck, our names on our coats. Mum and Dad came down to […]

WW II Snapshot: A Moment Frozen in Time

What do you see in this picture? Sharper than most WW II images, this one is of a fairly tranquil scene on the deck of CV-6, USS Enterprise. The shot was taken on May 15, 1942, and the red circles in their insignias had been painted over. That’s barely five months after Pearl Harbor and […]

Drones: Technology Changes the Face of Combat

Drones are not, as is often assumed, a 21st-century development. Far from it. Their history goes back more than 100 years, but the rate at which they are changing our everyday life continues to accelerate. So we thought it is worth looking back and seeing where the concept came from, how it developed, and where […]

DC-3 Gooney – Memories of First Flight

Everyone has a first flight: Mine was in a Gooney Life is a million episodes stitched together to form a ragged continuum. However, regardless of how many episodes are involved, there is always the first one. This is especially true of those of us who have lived a sizeable portion of our lives in the […]

Loves the Oil Hawks!

When I saw the article on Al Williams, I remembered some photos and information given to me by the wife of Al’s son, Jack, back in the 80’s. I had met Jack when he and his family were living in Charlotte, NC, and he shared with me some of the fascinating photos and stories of […]

What is the Aircraft?

Attached is a picture of my father (tall fellow standing) on an aircraft that appears to be shot down. My father immigrated from Denmark and joined the Canadian Army, 9 Canadian Field Squadron R.C.E.,formed in England April 1943. I know he was serving during the campaign in Italy. This picture came to my attention just last week […]

Travel Air A-6000A: Back from the Aerial Dead

Looking back at the Travel Air Manufacturing Company of the late 1920s from this end of history’s telescope, it looks like an aviation dream team. Of course, at the time, there was no way to know that each of the company’s founders, Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman would go on to become aviation […]

Bomber Crew: A Day in Their Lives

B-17 crewmen remember the German missions Aboard each of the thousands of B-17 Flying Fortresses that left the soil of England bound for targets in Europe were 10 young men. Outwardly, they were no different from any late-teen or early-twenties boy you’d meet anywhere in America. Same faces, same names, same youthful vigor and sense […]