1940’s

A Look Into the Past

Speakers on

Glenn Millers “In the Mood”

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Crossroads Store, Juke Joint and Gas Station, Melrose, Louisiana, 1940

Adolf Hitler visits Paris with architect Albert

Speer (left) June 23, 1940.

Hitler’s army had captured Paris, and he

came to admire his new city.

Workers Parking Lot at San Diego Airplane Factory, 1940

This picture was taken on September 16, 1941 at

Vinnitza, Ukraine and was found in the personal file of a

German Einsatzgruppen soldier. On the back of the

picture he had noted, “This is the last Jew of Vinnitza”.

28,000 Jews from the city and surrounding area were shot on

that day by the Einsatzkommando (a sub-

group of the five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing

squads responsible for systematically killing Jews and

Soviet political activists).

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Elm Street, Theater Row in Dallas, January 1942

WW2 Doolittle Launch on Japan, April 18, 1942

Curtis P-40 Flying Tiger Squadron. The Flying Tigers Were Credited With Destroying Nearly 300 Enemy Aircraft While Losing Only 14 Pilots on Combat Missions

Consolidated’s B-24 Liberator – The B-24 was built in two Consolidated plants. Production was also licensed to Douglas, North American and Ford. At its peak, Ford’s Willow Run plant was producing 428 planes a month. A total of over 18,000 planes were produced by the five plants. Today, only three B-24s remain in flying condition and there are only about 10 in museums. The planes were flown by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. A good number of the museum planes were salvaged from India’s bone yard.

WASPs (Women’s Air Service Pilots) walking past the B-17 flying fortress known as Pistol Packing Mama. In WW2 they shuttled airplanes from factories, served as test pilots and delivered supplies by air. They trained out of Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, now the home of the WASP museum.

Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942

March 6, 1943. Germans Explore a British Lancaster Bomber, Downed During an Air Raid on Berlin

Alcan Highway 1942

Bell Aircraft Corporation P-63 Kingcobras undergoing final Inspection at the Niagara Falls, New York factory. The planes were built for Russia and provided under the Lend-Lease program. Air Transport Command ferry pilots, including U.S. women pilots of the WASP program flew the planes to Great Falls, Montana and then onward via the Alaska-Siberia Route through Canada to Nome, Alaska where Soviet ferry pilots, many of them women, would take delivery of the aircraft and fly them over the Bering Strait to Russia. A total of 2,397 aircraft were delivered.

The United States restricted the theaters that the planes could be used in, however, once the Russians had possession of the planes, they used them where they pleased, perhaps they couldn’t understand English. On the other hand it may have been that in the midst of a war you just do what you need to do. A concept not foreign to American commanders like Patton and MacArthur

B-24 Bomber Assembly c. 1943

1943 - Sons of the PioneersTop - Tim Spencer, Hugh Farr, Karl Farr and Ken Carson

Bottom - Bob Nolan, Roy Rogers and Pat Brady

Auschwitz

Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band at the Yale Bowl

May 2, 1945, Soviet Soldiers Raising a Soviet Flag on the Roof of the Reichstag in Berlin

Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that Delivered the First Atomic Bomb

Cologne

Times Square Celebration of the end of the war. The soldier and the nurse are unknown but people have

come forward to claim the fame. Apparently the

nurse slapped the soldier

immediately after.

Making Ice Cream for a Church Social, Yanceyville, North Carolina

Berliners

Watching a

C-54

Carrying

Supplies

Land at

Tempelhof

Airport

During the

Berlin

Blockade

1948