1943: US Aircrew wearing interesting Jackets

[Bix B.]

Just found on youtube and worth a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgO6DX_9z0I&feature=related
Bix

 

[Metatron]

Great interviews, these are the things that make history real. It's one thing reading about a raid, the number of aircraft involved, their performance characteristics, but seeing the people involved speak, often very normal and pleasant human beings is something completely different...

As for the jackets, apart from some parkas, I can see the usual A2s and B3s, some pilots with B3s layered over A2s, and some B6s(I think) right at the end.

 

[Bix B.]

Hey Metatron, that`s what I was wondering, if there are B-6`s visible?

And you are right, that interview is somehow`real`, showing good mood after surviving a successful first operation.

 

[Peacoat]

A good piece of history; thanks for posting.

 

[Fletch]

And you are right, that interview is somehow`real`, showing good mood after surviving a successful first operation.

Speaking of interestingly attired airmen, Bix, isn't that Major Elissen in your avatar?

 

[Peacoat]

I went back and watched the interviews again. The first person being interviewed, Colonel Lemay, is Curtis Lemay, who later made General and was the father of the Strategic Air Command. He is the one who looks like John Belushi.

 

[Bix B.]

"Bix, isn't that Major Elissen in your avatar?"
Very good, Fletch!
"F.P.1 (Flying Platform Number One) was the name of a 1931 novel written by noted science fiction and fantasy writer/director Curt Siodmak, best known as the creator of the The Wolf Man.
The novel was turned into three films over 1932 to 1933, directed by Karl Hartl — one each in English, French, and German. Filming multiple versions in different languages (and with different cast) was common in the early sound film period. The German version was the last German film that either Siodmak or Peter Lorre, who played a secondary character (Photo-Jonny), would make in Germany before the war. It premiered on 22 December 1932, just 39 days before Hitler took power.

Written after Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, the plot concerned a permanent air station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - enormous platform serving as an airfield, with refueling and repair facilities.

The idea probably sounds naive today, but in the early 1930s it was taken seriously. Plans of Albert Berthold Henniger, a German engineer who intended to build a real platform, were used for the movie. Lieutenant Droste (played by Paul Hartman in the German version) wants to build an oceanic airstation. With the help of an experienced aviator Major Ellissen (Hans Albers), he manages to win the support of the Lennartz-Werke for the project...." More:http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/fp-1-doesnt-respond
Hans Albers was a great movie star in Germany those days, also he had stayed as an honorable man in the forthcoming dark years ...

Lemay seems to be dead cool ..., but the real "stars" in this short vid are to me the guys in 3:10 (Lieutenant ...?) and the ball turret gunner at 3:57 ... those were the days when damned was explicit ... I wonder, if they survived the war?

At 9:42 its a B6 ?