Some pretty cool footage if you're into that kind of thing and have the time.

Cool video, thanks for sharing.

Awesome video. I love seeing those old war films.

Lot of young men in there and they got it done.

Looked like some of them "jugs" guns didn't hold the best groups, but they seemed to work!
Dennis

You throw that many 50 cal rounds at something, groups don't matter too much

Reminds me of a bumper sticker on a customer's truck "USMC Machine Gunner: Accuracy by Volume"

My dad lflew a p47 and i believe 48 and 49 too? Got shot down in burma in enemy territory and made it out. I have one of his 50 cal cartriges

Nice video Finster.

The thing that sticks out to me are the number of German fighters sitting on the ground. That shows the importance of having oil. Had Hitler had fuel, I doubt that war would've ended as fast.

Hippie my understanding of it all is that we had almost 10 times the amount of fuel as did the axis tripartite. And we needed it we had long lines of supply going both to Asia and Europe. But that gave us a lot more training time too for our troupes......jk

We took out the war machine infrastructure in Germany. Can't fight without ammunition, fuel and things like ball bearings.

That's back when we fought to win.

Nice post. I knew a guy that flew them in ww2. What an experience to have a father, uncle or friend that could tell you the history about actual in time experience. Could just imagine what stories the ground crews could tell.

I wish i would have picked his brain more

Different era and not in live fire combat but pretty interesting video to hear the emotion in the pilots voices.

https://youtu.be/o7G1rvmwfIk

Great watch! Thanks for posting.

Garry-

They were a tough bird! One of the leading American aces flew a P-47. The P-51 just ended up being a better fighter plane and a lot of the Thunderbolts got converted to fighter-bombers.

Yeah, Germany's lack of fuel hurt them bad, although by half way through the war most of the machines were running on fuel derived from liquefied lignite coal that Germany had in large supply. The year that Germany made the most tanks was 1944, although their industry was obviously in a death spiral. Albert Speer was a very good production manager. Germany paid for Hitler and the Nazis, 4-5 million military deaths/missing, 1-2 million civilian deaths, lost of East Prussia, a divided country for 45 years. I think they've lost their taste for war...

Are you talking about Don Gentile? He is my paternal grandfather's first cousin. He much preferred the lighter planes he flew in the RAF and the P-51 to the less maneuverable P-47. He racked up the kills anyway.

When he was in his teens, his parents bought Don a plane and he used to fly under bridges in Piqua and through barns. He had incredible reflexes and nerve.

Keith

No, I think I was remembering Robert Johnson who had 27 air kills, all with P-47s. There was also Gabby (Francis) Gabreski who had 28 victories, mostly with P-47.

Here's a link to your relative, most of his victories were with P-51s. They were all tough hombres!

http://acepilots.com/usaaf_gentile.html

A list of ETO, 8th Air Force American fighter aces:

http://acepilots.com/usaaf_eto_aces.html