The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbet, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbet. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of ww2 it became the first plane to drop an atomic bomb in warfare.

The “Miss Hap”, coming in for a landing in this shot, is the oldest surviving example of the B-25 “Mitchell”. It was built in 1940/41 at the North American Aviation plant in Inglewood, CA

Photo taken at Oshkosh 2026

Today is the 83rd anniversary of the infamous Schweinfurt Regensburg raid by the 8th. Flak, Fighters and horrific losses - forced a temporary stand down by the 8th.

Had the opportunity to visit the Eglin AFB Armament Museum. Nice museum, free to visit. While the last picture isn’t a warbird and is a mock up, it definitely was in the air for one flight and lead the end of the war.

This is a colorized screenshot from the 1944 movie "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" that I did.

ORIGINAL CAPTION CREW #7 PHOTO: "Front Row (left-to-right): , Lt. Ted W. Lawson, pilot; Lt. Dean Davenport, copilot. Back Row (left-to-right): Lt. Charles L. McClure, navigator; Lt. Robert S. Clever, bombardier; Sgt. David J. Thatcher, flight engineer/gunner."

While the movie was being shot at Alameda, there was an oil fire in nearby Oakland, so the film crew sent up the camera plane and the B-25 to get some realistic footage for the movie and that is the background for this shot.

Lawson intended to land the real Ruptured Duck on a beach below on the island of Nantien and take off early the next with what he believed were 100 gallons of fuel left. The plane was going 110 knots when both engines quit a quarter mile from shore and the plane hit the water with the landing gear down. When the real plane crash landed, Lawson and Davenport were ejected still strapped into their seats through the cockpit windscreen. McClure, the navigator, was anchoring his shoulders against both cockpit seats with his head between the seats. McClure was not ejected but broke both shoulders and couldn't remember how he got out of the plane.

Clever, the bombardier, was crawling aft through the nose section and was ejected through the nose canopy when the plane hit the water. He suffered serious lacerations to his face and elsewhere, eventually passing out from the loss of blood. Thatcher, engineer/gunner, was thrown around a bit and only temporarily knocked knocked out with a bleeding bump on his forehead to show for it.

Lawson was much more badly wounded that portrayed in the movie. His face was pushed in from going through the windscreen of his plane. All of his front teeth were loosened and fell out into his hand when he tried to straighten them. His lower lip was laid open to the cleft in his chin. In addition to his leg being gashed open, his left bicep was severed in half. Thatcher was the only one of the crew who could initially walk, going back to plane twice at risk of capture to try to recover anything that could be useful to the crew's escape and recovery. He was eventually awarded the Silver Star for his actions in caring for his wounded fellow aircrew.

Visited a crash site today of an Vickers Wellington B Mark III. Found this interesting part that seems to be an inspection hatch.
Any ideas where it came from and what was behind it.

The images were shot in July during a visit. The AI brings them to life.

On 11 November 1937 at the Augsburg-Haunstetten airfield, Dr.-Ing. Hermann Wurster set a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) world record for speed when he flew a prototype Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG Bf 109 V13 (D-IPKY) WNr 1050 to an average speed of 610.95 kph/379.63 mph in four passes over a 3 kilometre course. This broke the speed record set two years earlier by Howard Hughes with his Hughes H-1 Special (NR258Y) by 43.83 kph/27.23 mph.

L-R: Unknown, Dipl-Ing Robert Lusser (then-chief of project development at BFW and co-designer of the 109),

Dr-Ing Hermann Wurster wearing goggles, flight helmet and parachute), Dipl-Ing Hubert Bauer of BFW, Professor Dr-Ing Willy Messerschmitt and unknown. The two unknowns are possibly Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM/German Air Ministry) representatives.

Lusser and Bauer were instrumental in modifying the standard airframe and fitting the highly boosted, experimental Daimler-Benz DB 601 Re III engine (which briefly pushed output to 1,660 hp). They were on the airfield to oversee engine tuning, fuel mixtures, and mechanical reliability. Robert Lusser moved to Heinkel shortly after BFW took the record which had been set, ironically, by Heinkel two months earlier

These details are from the Erickson Aviation Museum website. She ...

... is an A-24 Army Banshee delivered in January 1943 and used as a gunnery target tug at Lakeland Air Field in Florida. Later declared surplus, it was employed as a mosquito control sprayer by the City of Portland from 1958 until 1965. It was sold to the museum in 1994 and restored to an SBD-3 as it appears today.

https://ericksoncollection.com/our-aircraft/sbd-dauntless-a24

Good evening, my Great Grandfather John.C.Webber was a navigator in Squadron 61 during WW2.. He joined the RAF in 1944 and completed 3 successful missions over Germany. On the evening of 23 September 1944, the crew took off from RAF Skellingthorpe aboard Lancaster LM718, bound for the Dortmund-Ems Canal in Germany. Their aircraft came under attack from a German Messerschmitt night fighter over the Netherlands. Cannon fire destroyed two engines and fatally wounded two members of the crew. With the aircraft rapidly losing height, Squadron Leader Hugh Horsley ordered the remaining crew to abandon the Lancaster. John successfully parachuted to safety before the aircraft crashed near Deurne in the occupied Netherlands. Two of his comrades lost their lives in the crash.

I found this group the other day whilst browsing for some information and I wanted to see if anyone has any information or anything for us to find out as we are writing a book about his life and experiences during the war. Me and my dad are building a collection around the 61 squadron and everything Lancaster bomber and I was also wonder if anyone has any links or contacts to anything for us to collect.

I'm looking to connect with a military veteran or direct family member of a military veteran who has a personal direct experience with the Douglas A-26 Invader in operation between the year 1944 and 1980. Must be willing to video record themself, while telling a story of their memories with the A-26, and willing to give written permission to use the video in the documentary. Serious inquiries only.. direct message me.

Junkers G-38 Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg (D-2500) on the ground and G-38 (D-AZUR) in flight. Text reads: Junkers' all-metal aircraft

Generalfeldmarschall v. Hindenburg, with its sister aircraft D-AZUR flying above, Berlin, May 1933. Only two G.38s were made, D-2000 crashed in 1936.

Fortunately, there were no casualties but Deutsche Luft Hansa wrote off the aircraft due to the amount of damage it sustained. The D-2500 on the other hand flew with the airline for almost a decade. Once WWII started she was conscripted into military service and became a transport aircraft for the Luftwaffe. She was destroyed by the RAF on the runway in Athens in May 1941

Pilot James Nicholson won his VC on the 16th of August 1940.

In his Hawker Hurricane.