He named nearly every fighter he ever flew "Old Crow." In it he flew 116 missions over Germany, shot down more than 16 enemy aircraft, and was never hit by enemy aircraft fire, while half the men he flew with were killed or captured. Eighty years later, two P-51 Mustangs bearing that same name flew over his grave. This is the story of Bud Anderson..🧵1/6

B-17 Flying Fortress Makes Emergency Belly Landing (WWII) 🇺🇸 Heavily damaged by flak over Europe, this B-17 crew jettisons the ball turret and brings their Flying Fortress home for a wheels-up landing on a grass field. The pilot keeps perfect control as the plane skids across the turf, propellers bending on impact, before coming to a safe stop. A testament to the incredible toughness of the B-17 and the skill of her crew.

Walter Matthau served as a radioman-gunner in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, attaining the rank of Staff Sergeant. Enlisting in 1942, he completed 25 combat missions over Europe with the Eighth Air Force's 453rd Bombardment Group, flying out of RAF Old Buckenham in Norfolk, England. During his deployment in England, Matthau served in the same bomb group as fellow actor James Stewart. The two struck up a friendship, and following a debriefing one day, Matthau asked Stewart for advice on becoming an actor. Stewart's encouragement to "follow your passion" helped solidify Matthau’s decision to pursue an acting career via the G.I. Bill after the war.

P-51 Mustang Ignites Bf 109 Drop Tank Mid-Dogfight (1944) 🇺🇸🇩🇪 Restored gun camera footage shows a P-51 Mustang engaging a German Bf 109. Rounds strike the external drop tank, causing it to ignite and explode violently. The American pilot, Lt. D.H. Schuh, watched the German pilot eject moments later.

The Douglas B-18 Bolo was built to carry twice the bomb load and range of the Martin B-10. Entering service in 1937, the twin-engine bomber hit 215 mph with a 4,500-pound bomb load and six-man crew. About 350 were produced before newer bombers replaced it in frontline service.🫡

When legendary designers Kelly Johnson and Hall Hibbard cooked up the Lockheed P-38 Lightning in the late 1930s, they weren't just building a fighter. They were breaking the mold. They skipped the standard single-engine blueprint for a radical twin-boom layout powered by two supercharged 1,425 hp Allison V-1710 V12s and concentrated all the firepower straight into the nose. No wing gun convergence issues. Just a concentrated buzzsaw of four .50-cals and a 20mm cannon. By the time the D-model rolled out, it became the first U.S. production aircraft to smash past 400 mph in level flight. 1/3

🔉Pre-order Now! 📖Man of Confidence Shot down at twenty-one, tortured by the Gestapo, and sent to the notorious Stalag 17B, Kenneth “Kurt” J. Kurtenbach refused to be just another prisoner of war—he became a “prisoner at war.” 🛒 tinyurl.com/msmw49av

By the autumn of 1942, aircrews were reporting that the existing maps were simply too small to be of real practical use in the field. In response, MI9 authorised an entirely new series of escape and evasion maps. The printing plates were produced by Kodak, and for the remainder of the war these maps continued to be refined and issued. They were usually numbered, with those carrying the prefix “43” believed to have been printed in 1943. Printed at a main scale of 1:1,000,000, they included larger detailed inserts at 1:250,000 to 1:500,000 and covered vast areas of Europe, from Spain to Holland and Portugal to Turkey. In 1943 and 1944, MI9 produced these maps in enormous quantities so that they could be issued as standard equipment to operational aircrew and ground forces – especially in the weeks leading up to D-Day. For men trapped behind enemy lines in the fierce fighting that followed the Normandy landings, such maps were often the difference between capture and survival. Disorientated, exhausted, and cut off from their units after days of intense combat, a good escape map could mean the difference between finding their way back to Allied lines or being hidden and sheltered by brave local families until they could reach safety. More in my MI9 book: amzn.to/3DFObMd

This Day in History: 5 June 1944 – “Alright, let’s go.” In the early hours of 5 June 1944, inside a dimly lit room at Southwick House near Portsmouth, the fate of Europe hung on a weather forecast. For days, storms had battered the Channel, threatening to derail the most ambitious military operation ever attempted. The Allied invasion of Nazi‑occupied France, Operation Overlord, was poised on a knife‑edge. At 04:15, the key figures gathered: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral Bertram Ramsay, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and the man whose judgement mattered most that morning, meteorologist James Stagg. Stagg delivered the news with quiet urgency: the storm would ease, briefly, on 6 June. A narrow, fragile window, but a window nonetheless. Debate flickered around the table. Some feared catastrophic losses, especially among the airborne divisions. Others argued that delay would hand the Germans precious time. Eisenhower listened, pacing, weighing the lives of thousands against the chance to liberate a continent. Then he stopped, turned back to his commanders, and spoke the words that set history in motion: “Alright… let’s go.” Within hours, Admiral Ramsay’s vast armada, nearly 7,000 vessels, began slipping out of English ports. By nightfall, paratroopers were boarding their aircraft. And before dawn on 6 June, the first Allied troops were crossing the Channel toward Normandy. Lest We Forget.

Luftwaffe Guncamera footage Messerschmitt Bf-109G6 | Battle for Germany June 1944

What It’s Like Inside the Nose of a B-17 Flying Fortress 🇺🇸 Rare footage from inside the plexiglass nose of a surviving B-17 Flying Fortress gives a close-up look at the bomber’s iconic forward compartment while in flight. The video clearly shows the famous Norden bombsight, .50 caliber cheek guns with ammunition belts loaded, and the cramped navigator’s station where crews operated during WWII bombing missions over Europe. This exact position was once occupied by bombardiers and navigators flying deep into enemy territory aboard the Flying Fortress. 📹 Patrick Carey