Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
The B-29’s photo-reconnaissance capabilities yielded what Major General Haywood Hansell called, “probably the greatest…single contribution…in the air war with Japan.” The Superfortress’ photo-reconnaissance configuration was the F-13A. On 1 November 1944, one of the two F-13A aircraft that arrived from the U.S. just two days before flew from Saipan to Tokyo. Captain John......
Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
The Catalina performed some of the most critical surveillance missions of World War II. An RAF Catalina located the German battleship Bismarck, enabling the Royal Navy to destroy it in May 1941. A Canadian Catalina warned the Royal Navy’s Indian Ocean fleet of the approach of a Japanese carrier group in April 1942 before being shot down by a Zero. A Catalina also spotted the Japanese carrier......
Courtesy Audio | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
The world’s first operational jet fighter was the Me 262A-1. On 16 May 1945, technical intelligence personnel found this aircraft at Munich-Riem airfield where fighter ace Adolph Galland’s Jagdverband (JV) 44 left it behind as the unit fled to Austria. Personnel of the 54th Air Disarmament Squadron named it Beverly Anne and it became one of 10 Watson’s Whizzers aircraft returned to the......
Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
The FW 190D-9 on display surrendered to the Royal Air Force at Flensburg, Germany, up near the Danish border. It served with JG3 during the war. The American technical intelligence troops acquired it from the British and loaded it on board the H.M.S. Reaper for the trip back to the United States. As FE-120, the aircraft participated in six hours of flight testing here at Wright Field, before......
Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
American forces captured this Bf 109G-10 at an airfield near Munich at the end of the war. It originally belonged to Jagdgeschwader (JG) 52, the same unit the highest scoring aces of all time belonged to. American technical intelligence personnel trucked the aircraft to Cherbourg, France, where it went on board the H.M.S. Reaper, along with the museum’s FW 190D- 9 and Me 262. After arriving......
Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
Sometimes technical intelligence personnel went to great lengths to recover enemy equipment and bring it back for exploitation. The museum’s Ju 88D-1 defected from the Romanian Air Force to the Royal Air Force on the island of Cyprus in July 1943. The British flew it to Egypt and turned it over to American volunteer pilots at Cairo in October 1943. Those pilots flew it from Cairo to Dayton......
Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
When intelligence indicated that the Germans planned to deploy a ballistic missile against England, one of Churchill’s scientific advisors claimed it to be impossible since, in his expert opinion, it required solid propellant. According to Lord Cherwell, that made the missile too huge to hide, thus it was false intelligence. When the V-2s began falling in September 1944, an angry Churchill......
Audio by NMUSAF PA | National Museum of the U.S. Air Force | 05.23.2013
When the V-1s began to fall in London in June 1944, Dr. R.V. Jones devised an ingenious plan to save lives. Knowing that German double-agents needed to provide at least some truth and that the V-1 flying bombs typically fell several miles short of Trafalgar Square, Jones determined that the spies needed to report the V-1 impacts to the north and west of London, along with the times of the ones......
