Saturday, May 21, 2011

Vintage Warbirds

A little background on this first picture might be in order.


The warbird featured on this veteran's jacket is a B-25. After Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Doolittle led an incredibly daring bombing raid on Tokyo. The B-25s were launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier with just enough fuel to drop their bombs on Tokyo and then bail out and ditch their planes over China. It was basically a big feel-good raid for Americans and it was designed to send the message to Japan that if you can hit us, we can hit you. In today's parlance, it would have been called a "Fuck You Too!" mission.

In case you can't make it out, the banner on his jacket says "Partial Payment".
















3 comments:

Hyperblogal said...

One of my Uncles was stationed with the Flying Tigers in China.....

Anonymous said...

Damn nice pictures

Anonymous said...

Currently in Tokyo where the firebombing in 1945 killed 100,000 - how is that partial payment for the 2000 killed at Pearl Harbour?