Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, January 19. 2009

A P-51 named February

This tribute to the Gray Eagles (WWII pilots) was in conjunction with an air show in Ohio called "The Final Roundup." It was the last large gathering of the remaining P-51 Mustang fighters used during WWII. There were about 120 of the fighters there, all of them in flying condition, of course.  The flyover seen at the end of the video trailer is composed entirely of P-51s spelling out the number 51.


A fine airplane. Video here.

Posted by Gwynnie in History at 05:20 | Comments (8) | Trackback (1)

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Saturday Verse: John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Our post on A P-51 named February moved us to post Magee's well-known sonnet, High Flight Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-sp
Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: Jan 24, 07:44

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Thanks, Maggiesfarmers, for posting this beautiful and moving video about my favorite World War II airplane. The WWII pilot featured in the video gave so eloquent and vivid a representation of this whole generation of warriors who populated my youth and saved our country for us to live in and enjoy the rest of our lives.

It was a near thing. We almost didn't win. And we lost more than 140,000 brave souls to death in combat.

Mr. Brooks made clear once again in this video that the job of the oldest generation of any time is to "show and tell" -- show the young people who are close to them today, the hard lessons they learned in their own youth, and to help those youngsters to learn some of the hard lessons they learned in the refining fire of war.

Marianne
#1 marianne matthews on 2009-01-19 12:14 (Reply)
Wonderful post, MM. In the interests of serving the subject its due, however, I believe USA KIA WWII was just under 400,000.
#2 buddy larsen on 2009-01-19 14:16 (Reply)
Just up (h/t Instapundit) --a Virginia Postrel tribute to the Tuskeegee airmen --synchronistically re this post, P-51 drivers.

http://www.deepglamour.net/deep_glamour/2009/01/giving-aviator-glamour-a-black-face.html
#3 buddy larsen on 2009-01-19 16:49 (Reply)
buddy ... Thanks for the kind words. Actually, I erred. I got my figure [or general ballpark thereof] from the Statistical Summary of America's Major Wars, published by The United States Civil War Center, made available through Louisiana State University website. This is a wonderfully compact group of statistics about all of the wars the United States has been involved in since the Revolutionary War. It includes the military participation ratio for each war, the number of men enrolled in the armies, the deaths, combat and other, the number of wounded, and the total number of casualties. World War II is shown as having 292,131 combat dead, 115,185 other dead and 670,846 wounded, for an aggregate total of 1,078,162.

I'm pretty inept on researching things on the computer, especially this laptop of my husband's. If you know where I could find other figures that are more accurate, please give me the web address.

Thanks in advance ...

Marianne
#4 Marianne Matthews on 2009-01-19 21:26 (Reply)
MM, up against the noble and grateful sentiment that inspired your post, a numerical transcription error is less than a quibble. Had it been any other topic, twould've been unworthy of even the quibble. The net is funny tho --on factual matters --i guess i mean numbers --one almost has to correct them if one reasonably is able --otherwise someday some Martian or Tralfamadorean may pick up a random clerical error and act on it somehow, and thereby wrongly change the past and the future of all Creation. (*whew!*)

I don't have a site (or cite) for that number --it's just a memory, reinforced here and there as i come across it repeated in reading various items. It pretty much agrees with the site you've listed, though. That's a good site --i saved it --thanks!
#4.1 buddy larsen on 2009-01-19 22:38 (Reply)
A wonderful video. My dad was a WWII pilot. So many of them are gone now. I hope examples of their planes live on forever.
#5 TomR on 2009-01-19 22:23 (Reply)
I was lucky enough to attend the air show (A Gathering of Mustangs & Legends")at Rickenbacker Field near Columbus that is shown in the video-bought a hat and everything! Not ashamed to say that I teared-up during the fly-over there and while watching this video. What a plane and what men.
#6 MikeinAppalachia on 2009-01-20 18:49 (Reply)
Summary information about USAF aircraft, including the P-51, may be found at
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/research/aircraft/index.asp
#7 JerryB on 2009-01-25 14:05 (Reply)

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