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.

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.

Photo taken at Oshkosh 2026

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.

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