Flight Journal

ALMOST ALL OF THE AIRCRAFT featured in this issue are combat survivors and represent a broad range of purpose and missions. However, their uniqueness didn’t exempt any of the men who flew them from the never-ending perils and danger of aerial combat.

Previously owned by Mike Brown, “Big Bossman” is one of three flyable Tigercats in the world and about only 10 or so remain in existence. “Big Bossman,” now known as the silver-painted “La Patrona,” was the first F7F ever to race at the National Cham

ALTHOUGH CONCEIVED IN 1941, by the time the twin-engine Grumman F7F Tigercat hit the streets, it never saw action in WW II. The XF7F prototypes first flew in December 1943, and the first production models were delivered to the Marines in April 1944.

DESIGNED TO BE A LAND-BASED, medium altitude bomber, the B-25 was tasked with one of the War’s most spectacular missions. On April 18, 1942, 16 heavily laden B-25s took off from the USS Hornet’s pitching deck and headed towards Japan. Led by Lt. Col.

ONE KOREAN-ERA VETERAN PILOT who flew F7Fs in action was the late Maj. Carroll E. “Snuffy” Brown, USMC (Ret.), who joined the Marines in 1942. In his career, he flew the Dauntless, Helldiver, Hellcat, Corsair, SNB, Tigercat, Duck, R4D, R5D and eventu

When a run of-the-mill B-25 went into combat in the Pacific, it carried an assortment of flexible .50-and .30-caliber machine guns in its Plexiglas nose. This was not a heavy-duty punch by any means, but the aircraft’s role was as a medium-altitude b

The Zero raced through slanted columns of tropical light, prevented by high cirrus from leaving its shadow while skimming the slick New Guinea rain-forest roof. The Zero was dirty green with a black cowling and might have been hard to pick out except

IN ONLY 30 MISSIONS, Capt. Ralph S. Parr downed 10 enemy aircraft, becoming the 11th double jet ace on the last day of the Korean War. Having just landed from a combat mission, the four of us were walking casually from our squadron’s sandbagged revet

IN THE COLD, crisp spring air at 18,000 feet on March 30, 1945, First Lt. Dan Meyers suddenly found himself flying in a cloud, in an otherwise blue and completely cloudless sky. The mysterious fog was generated by the engine failure of his P-51D Must

To commemorate the brave wartime crews operating in dire conditions over the English Channel, UK-based PBY-5A Catalina G-PBYA was repainted as USAAF 5th Emergency Rescue Squadron OA-10A 44-33915. While the majority of the scheme was easy to reproduce

THE BOMBING CAMPAIGNS OVER EUROPE AND JAPAN were as different as tea and sake, with one exception: Mustangs were the escort of choice for both—and for obvious reasons. While the B-17s and B-24s reigned supreme over fortress Europe, the distances in t

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AS A SOLDIER DURING WORLD WAR I, Don Luscombe became fascinated with aviation. It wasn’t until 1927 that Don produced his first airplane: a side by side, high-wing Monocoupe. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, Luscombe developed a series of Monocoupes th

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