In early 1944 the US Navy assembled an untrained and ill-prepared fighter squadron and shipped it for immediate action in the final stage of Operation Cartwheel. This is the story of the first Fighting Squadron 34.
The First Fighting Squadron VF-34
“A Thousand Bombers, or One Battleship”
The Battle of the East China Sea. "Nearly all [Beast] stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon... That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it." - A.N. Wilson
The RAAF’s New Guinea Boston Tea Party
This is the story of an aircraft the RAAF didn't want to use and a model I didn't want to finish.
Not Just Pretty Nose Art; The Black Widows of Iwo Jima and Ie Shima, March-August 1945
The men of the 348th, 349th and 6th Night Fighter Squadrons were more than the nose art on their P-61's.
Lt. John “Ray” Johnson’s “Fighting Cocks” P-38L-1 Sep 1944 – Mar 1945
The 13th Air Force did not fight the most glamorous of wars, theirs' was a war of ground attack, relentlessly destroying Japanese ground forces and infrastructure. They fought, not from centralized bases closely tied together, but from island bases, spread hundreds of miles apart.
No. 25 Squadron, RNZAF Piva Airfield, Bougainville, March – May 1944
This update brings to life another of the older articles, from around 2005-2006 and tells the story of No.25 Squadron RNZAF in Bougainville in mid 1944...
Col. James Beckwith’s 15th FG P-51D-25 Mustang “Squirt” at Iwo Jima, March-May 1944
Early on the morning of 7 April the 15th and 21st Groups were poised ready for the signal to start engines. The briefings of the day before and that morning had everyone eager to get the operation underway...
CV-9 USS Essex & AVG-83, March-August 1945
"I often think of 409 at the bottom of the Pacific with some of my personal gear aboard. After all this time there is probably nothing left..."
