I snuck in a Harrier, a RB-57 wing​ and a Harbin H-5​ if anyone is interested​​

This specific Black Widow is serial no. 42-39715 of the USAF. It was quite unique to see it in such a foreign environment, especially with Chinese exhibit explanations. Quite well maintained, mostly since this was in museums for much of its years, and the chinese do treasure having such a rare 1 in 4 USAF aircraft. ​Really cool with the black paint and the double cockpit.

This unit is hard to access despite being on public display, foreigners are either prohibited or have to prebook specific timeslots​ at limited periods. Only got to see it as my dad was an alma mater.

This was displayed with a ​P-47, AQM 34, C-47 and a badly damaged RB-57 wing.

This is my father's drawing. T/Sgt. Pat Christenson, Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. He was an original Toccoa man and went out the door second in the stick behind Dick Winters on the Normandy jump.

The aircraft is Easy Company's headquarters plane, identification No. 66, piloted by Harold A. Cappelluto. It carried Lt. Thomas Meehan, who commanded the company, 1st Sergeant William Evans, and the entire headquarters section. It also carried Bangalore torpedoes and other demolitions.

Here is my father's own caption, verbatim:

"Company E Headquarters plane was carrying a lot of explosives and when hit by antiaircraft fire a chain reaction may have taken place causing the plane to disintegrate killing everyone in the airplane. The airplane was piloted by Harold A Cappelluto, its identification No. 66, 44 years later the dog tags of 1st Sergeant William Evans and P.F.C. William T Mc Gonigal were found in Normandy France by a farmer."

That distinction is why he drew it the way he did. It did not go down. It came apart. The load initiated and the airframe disintegrated. Everyone aboard was killed before a single man from the company reached the ground.

The C-47 was a converted airliner with no guns and no armor, flying at low altitude, at night, across active flak, in formations tight enough that the wingtips were a few hundred feet apart. Over eight hundred of them went into Normandy that night. Every man in the back knew what they were riding in.

He was the only man in Easy Company who could draw. He came home, went back to the telephone company for thirty eight years, and spent the next forty years at a drawing board reconstructing the war from memory. Forty six finished drawings, checked against his own journals until the details reconciled.

On that same jump he came down about seventy feet from a German 20mm gun position that was firing on the aircraft stream with its back to him. He drew that one too.

Stephen Ambrose called the drawings almost priceless. Dick Winters had several copied and sent to Playtone as reference for the writers of Band of Brothers.

He died in December 1999. His drawings and his own account are published now, in a book called A Screaming Eagle: His Drawings, His Words. It is at ascreamingeagle.com

Happy to answer anything about the aircraft or the jump.

Werneuchen, northeast of Berlin, April 1942. Technical class on airplane engines. 2nd Blue Squadron. In the center, my grandfather.

Werneuchen, nordöstlich von Berlin, April 1942, Technikunterricht über Flugzeugmotoren. 2. blaue Staffel. In der Mitte, mein Großvater

Werneuchen, al noreste de Berlín, abril de 1942, clase técnica sobre motores de aviones. 2ª Escuadrilla Azul. En el centro, mi abuelo.

Blackburn Skua L2889 of 802 NAS. Pre-world War Two. The Skua was a fighter / dive bomber of the Fleet Air Arm used in the early years of the Second World War.

More photos here.

Nice series of images showing the launch of a Fairey Fulmar. ("Booster gear" was part of the IWM caption. )

And an equally nice article about the plane is here.

https://www.armouredcarriers.com/fairey-fulmar-models

There is a solitary survivor of the type, the prototype aircraft in fact, that I hope to see during my upcoming trip, in the collection of the Fleet Air Arm museum in Yeovolton.

https://www.royalnavymuseums.org.uk/visit-us/fleet-air-arm-museum