National Museum of the Mighty 8th Air Force, 2

 More pix from the National Museum...

A diorama of the August 1st, 1943, low-level Ploesti oil refinery raid; mostly
the 9th Air Force, operating from Libya, with three groups of 8th Air Force
B-24s; perhaps the costliest mission in the air war, at least on the US side;
Operation Tidal Wave; many more raids on Ploesti were to follow

Still in the hangar...a P-51 Mustang...enough performance and range

to escort the heavies deep into Germany and shoot down the German 109s

Descriptions of the various crew members...navigators and bombardiers
were in the same pay grade as pilots...!

1942 recruitment film

Not his only aviation film

I have the sheet music, from the pianist of the family, my mother

The lucky ones who jumped and survived...and spent the rest of
the war in a POW camp...like one of my first bosses, Charles Cole,
a P-51 pilot...

Memphis Belle...sad beginning, sad ending...

Memphis Belle crew...first to make it through 25 missions...80% didn't...

Stained glass for Vicki

8th Air Force fighter aces, mostly P-51s, some P-47s

Tuskegee Airman...WACs

My introduction to all this, FWIW, was from one of

my father's books--he worked in the aviation industry in

the early 1940s, building B-24s, before joining the USAAF

and working on B-29s--much to my surprise, The Aircraft

Yearbook for 1943, is up on the web in PDF--I hadn't looked

at its pages since junior high school...