Category: Uncategorized

Rare Footage of WWII Airborne Training at English Glider Base

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Today’s film highlights activities at an Airborne Glider Base in England in 1944 just before the D-Day invasion. The roll opens with airmen painting the invasion stripes on a glider and then a C-47. The base band rates a whole minute of film. The meat of the roll is four minutes (four camera rolls) of glider loading, takeoffs, over the shoulder shots in the cockpit, vertigo-inducing shots of the ground, and a landing that disgorges a jeep and a squad of men that immediately go on patrol! The film is actually probably a good reflection of the Army’s glider assault doctrine as it was understood at the time.

A screener for this reel doesn’t exist elsewhere! I shot it from the flatbed film viewer at the National Archives (NARA). The description in NARA’s on-line Catalog dates everything from August 11th, 1944, while the evidence of my eyes says otherwise. The painting was only ordered on June 3rd, 1944. The stripes were ordered removed a month later, when they made Allied aircraft on the ground an easier target.

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D-Day Insights: PT Boat Operations in the English Channel

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As part of an extended look back at D-Day for the 82nd anniversary of the assault on Hitler’s Europe, today’s film examines PT boat operations in Plymouth harbor and the English Channel.

Regular readers of this blog know that written descriptions found at NARA are sometimes misleading, incomplete, incorrect, or missing all together. In this case the shot card for the film, shot by the US Navy and the Office of Strategic Services (“OSS”), identifies this as having been shot on August 11, 1944. That description may apply to the first part of the compiled reel, but the second half of the film includes the following slate:

We know from related research that Lt. Marcus Armistead was filming aboard PT boats in the channel on June 5th and 6th. Specifically, he was tagging along on missions by PT Boat Squadron 2(2). Commanded by Cmdr. John Bulkely, this small squadron of 3-4 “Higgins” PT boats was tasked with supporting special operations in the Channel, and running messages as needed.

Armistead was a veteran of “John Ford’s Navy”, a member of the veteran Hollywood director’s navy reserve unit which evolved into the “Field Photographic Branch” of the OSS. He was responsible for the testing and mounting of the fixed cameras installed on dozens of D-Day landing craft. He later moved onto several other projects for the OSS and the US Navy through the Korean War.

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The Jet Fighter That Might Have Been

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Today’s film concerns the US Army Air Forces first jet fighter prototype, the XP-59 Bell Airacomet. The film shows four prototypes under active evaluation at Muroc Army Airfield in California, now Edwards Air Force Base. The prototype’s first flight was in October 1942. The XP-59 was frequently disguised on the tarmac by the ruse of attaching a fake propeller! The plane was under powered, floundering in head-to-head testing with contemporary Allied fighters, so no combat match ups with Axis fighters ever occurred. The prototype was never accepted for active service or full-production. It remained as a test bed and trainer for several years after the war. In total, 66 planes in 7 variants were produced. Six air frames survive today.

This reel, a film work print, has not been digitized by the National Archives, so this look at the Airacomet prototype is not widely available. I digitized from the work print using a camera pointed to the flatbed film viewer in the National Archives Research Room. The only detailed description of this film is also only available in the Research Room.

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Crawling From the Wreckage!

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Today’s reel offers a rare sound-on-film interview of a pilot that crawled from the wreckage of a captured Japanese aircraft. The pilot, Lt. Bernard D. Dyrlands, was apparently ferrying a captured Japanese Army “Nate” fighter for analysis by Technical Air Intelligence personnel. The plane developed fuel system problems and had to land immediately. He crashed upside down near an Army Air Forces (USAAF) airfield in Burma and emerged without a scratch! The second half of the film shows the crash site. The plane has seen better days!

The AAF cataloguers described the film as follows:

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Clearly, the AAF cataloguers, probably working after the war, without access to the photographers “dope sheets” totally missed the context. Almost certainly, they never listened to the recorded audio!

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Unlocking the Lockheed P-80: America’s First Jet Fighter

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Meet the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first production jet fighter! The plane was designed and built in 143 days in 1943 and entered regular service in February 1945. Powered by a single British built Halford power plant, the plane could reach 503mph in level flight.

The US Army Air Forces chose to keep the fighter under wraps. It never combat in the second World War It saw limited service patrolling in Italy after that country surrendered. The aircraft was used extensively in Korea, where it was overmatched by the Soviet Mig-15. Later in the conflict it was supplanted by North American F-86 Sabre, a design with swept wings that offered superior performance.

This film was shot by the USAAF in 1944, depicting the pre-production YP-80A model. The reel is not available digitally at the National Archives (NARA) and was only minimally described in NARA’S On-line Catalog. Footage like this is discoverable only by on-site researchers with enough experience to plumb the legacy finding aids. Add impact to your next production: hire a professional archival media researcher!