Tag: freelance research

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.

Use high-impact footage in your documentary production! Hire a professional media researcher. They add value.

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.

18-CS-7316 shotcardDownload

Content like this is accessible only by the efforts of professional media researchers such as myself. Hire a professional researcher for your next project, publication, or production!

Rediscovering WWII’s Forgotten Films: A Unique GI Adventure

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Happy 2026 to all!

Today’s film is a forgotten piece of fluff found in the “Combat Subjects” series of the US Army Air Forces in WWII. Basically, a few GI’s find a derelict Kubelwagen (aka “German Jeep”) and decide to get it running again! Volkswagen resurrected the design in the late 60’s as “The Thing”.

The story was a welcome diversion from the grim tales of war. The fact that it has sound makes it stand out. Only a handful of films with composite sound are found in this series. There were a few ways to record sound optically but field recording was a different thing from commercial film. In this case the recording was likely made on transcription discs, later converted to an optical sound track in a lab.

Films like this are under-described in the National Archives on-line catalog, and are usually unavailable digitally. This particular film was recorded off the flatbed film viewers in NARA’s research room, no other digital copy exists. A professional media researcher can navigate the resources available in the research room and add value to your next production!

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  • “CASE CLOSED” – Ending the Search for John Ford’s D-Day

    62 years ago, in an article appearing in The American Legion magazine, film director John Ford recalled D-Day on the 20th anniversary of Operation Neptune, the naval assault on Normandy. Ford was in charge of Navy and Coast Guard photographic assets for the invasion. Confessing that his recollections were fuzzy and disconnected, Ford recalled the…

  • Rare Footage of WWII Airborne Training at English Glider Base

    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…

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

    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…

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Back in the USSR!

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Today’s film from the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) illustrates a forgotten part of World War II, the titanic allied effort to arm and equip a future adversary: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (“USSR”). A major import channel for these supplies was through the Persian Gulf by way of a network of ports and airbases in Iran and Iraq.

This roll, shot by the US Army Air Forces in 1943, opens with the American star livery on an aircraft being repainted red for the Russians. Hundreds of large crates and ships suggest this a large, port, probably in Basra, Iraq. Enlisted personnel move crated aircraft around, opening one to reveal a “factory-fresh” Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter plane. Russian and American officers inspect the shipments and greet each other. The attitude illustrated is very much “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”!

Films like these aren’t well described in NARA’s on-line catalog, truly accessible only by those willing to work in the physical research rooms with the background granted by years of experience. Hire a professional researcher for your next production or publication and add impact!

The Dark Legacy of the German-American Bund

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This short film was produced by the German-American Bund in the 1930’s as a promotional tool. It was later seized by the Department of Justice as part of an investigation of Fritz Kuhn, the Bund’s leader, on charges of being an unregistered agent of a hostile foreign government. The iconography of the Nazi swastika side-by-side with the flag of the United States underscores the fact that political extremism is an existential threat to a pluralistic, democratic society. Sadly, today the elected government of the United States is taking radical steps that remind us that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. As John Stuart Mill said “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

This is one brief story of among millions waiting to be told by using content available at the National Archives. An experienced professional researcher can leverage archival media to help bring your story alive.