Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Lex,
Unless I’m missin’ something, you’ve got the wrong link. Really cool plane, but, not a P-47 for sure.
Hmm.. looks like you corrected it ’bout the time I posted my comment. Sorry ’bout that.
Hey I’ve tried closing and refreshing my browser and I’m still getting the twin-engine flying lawnmower vid.
Weird. Now it works and, Holy Crap. What were those guys packing? Jeez. Sucks to be the guys on the ground.
I wonder how many pilots were in this group? They flew 175 sorties on one day, which suggests something on the order of 50-75 operational airplanes. That would in turn imply something on the order of 100-200 pilots at any one time.
And they lost 97.
Glorious video, Lex. Just out-fragging-standing!
Just what I needed this afternoon at the desk.
You-Tube, Google vids and the like are becoming such improtant media. Gosh, I wish they’d get rid of the “girls-kissing-each-other” garbage and stick to really quality material.
BTW, anybody notice it wasn’t the French Air Farce flying from France? Maybe they were playing with those twin engine prototypes CDR Salamander linked us to.
Incredibly tough aircraft! The gun footage is outstanding but what is truly impressive is the damage sustained by some that made it back in spite of “missing parts”.
Jim, flying low-level CAS is about a dangerous a mission as it gets, especially if you’re down low rooting around in the weeds, and you get pounced on from above. Suggest you read Martin Caidin’s “Thunderbolt!”, his story of the aircraft, and Bob Johnson.
And yes, the Jug was an awesome piece of iron, just like it’s “son”, the ThunderboltII, aka, the Warthog.
mmmmmmm, props, lots of props…..
- SJS
Reminded me of newsreels that were shown in our theaters (lets just say “years ago”). I loved it, thanks!
Out here each August, the Yankee Air Museum (at Willow Run in Ypsilanti, MI) has the “Thunder Over Michigan.” They always perform a WWII re-enactment and it always has Thunderbolts providing CAS to the US tanks & halftracks. Somehow, the Thunderbolts also end up chasing down the ME109. Good stuff. Great video.
Reminds me of an old cartoon about the youth of the Jug pilots:
A jeep driven by MPs drops off a captured Luftwaffe pilot at a battalion aid station near a forward air strip. The aristocratic German is pissed. “I am Hauptmann Jurgen Von Something and I demand to see the man who shot me down!”
So the MPs call the airfield and another jeep brings the P-47 pilot who bagged the Kraut. Von Something can’t believe his eyes, and flips out: “You boy!! You, you…child!! You cannot be the man who defeated me!” But the MPs nod and gesture to the gum-chewing butter-bar who doesn’t seem impressed at all with the Prussian ace. Trying to salvage his dignity, Von Something looks down his nose and sneers: “I have sixty-four victories! Sixty-four!! How many victories do you have??!!
The kid grins back: “One sir!”
Got to agree with Byron on the book Thunderbolt! Great read. There is an especially good part about Bob Johnson bringing his severely damaged Jug back to England, with an ME-109 trying to shoot him down in several passes.
Great film, I especially like the mechanics riding on the wing for guidance. Gotta love a tail dragger with a huge prop.
Lex sez: Sometimes I think that I was born 40 years too late.
But had you been born 40 years earlier, you probably would have flown some sort of ‘cat…Hell or Wild…and missed all that stuff in The Old Countries.
Great vid, and so rare because it’s in color. Thanks!
Oh, man. Dangerous and deadly, and I feel sorry the railroad folks, but WOW!
My favorite WWII warbird. Great video. Few other titles for the readership to check out: Thunderbolt by Bledsoe; Zemke’s Wolfpack by Freeman; and a personal hero of mine: Gabby by Gabreski/Molesworth; and finally P47 Thunderbolt by Hess.
BDA out of the front windscreen!
great secondaries from bullets!