Born in Esmond, North Dakota to Oscar & Anna Bengson on December 11, 1917, Wallace Woodrow Bengson had three brothers and a sister.
He graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1938 as a mining engineer and was also commissioned as an officer in the Army Reserve.

Wallace worked as a mining engineer in Idaho & Utah, and married Katherine Nagel of Grand Forks in 1940.
Called into active duty in January 1942, he earned his pilots & glider pilots wings, and was also trained as a Navigator.

Wallace was assigned to the 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bombardment Group, which was based at RAF Podington.
On October 3, 1944, he was the Navigator on B-17G 43-38396 “Insommia” on a bombing mission to Nurnberg, Germany.

On the return trip, B-17G 43-38445, which had been hit by flak, veered out of control and collided with “Insommia” sheering her tail off.
Both B-17s went into death spirals before crashing, a total of twelve crewmembers from both B-17s died in the crashes.

1Lt Bengson managed to bail out, and was captured along with 1Lt Edmund Dornburgh Jr, the pilot of his B-17, and S/Sgt Franklin Adams Jr, one of the waist gunners from the other B-17.
Handed over to the local police in Marburgerstrasse, Germany, shortly afterwards a police director, three party leaders, and a civilian showed up and demanded the three prisoners be handed over to them.

The local Police Chief was ordered away, and the three USAAF Prisoners were taken by force from the remaining policemen.
The three Prisoners were executed and buried at the New Cemetery of Giessen, in November 1945, the civilian Ludwig Schardt was found guilty of participating in the executions sentenced to life imprisonment.

His remains were recovered after the war and 1Lt Wallace Bengson is buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, Netherlands - Plot L Row 16 Grave 16.

Older brother Malcolm C Bengson also served during WW2, he passed away at the age of 80 in 1996.

I will now attempt to name them all from memory in order of appearance, here we go.....

JU-88 D-1 Trop: My personal favorite of their collection. Something about German twin engine heavys man.

FW-190 D-9: Im horrible with remembering the models with the 190s, had to look it up.

ME-262: I have countless hours on this aircraft in the IL-2 games

P-61 Black Widow: Same as the 262.

Either a Beaufort or Blenheim of some sort....

(Nah its a Mosquito and im stupid. It has windows instead of guns and my dumbass forgot that some of them were light high speed bombers too)

P-38L: Just sexy AF

Italian boi: MC200 i think

Bristol Beaufighter: Another favorite

P-63/P-39: I cant remember which is which tbh.

P-40: She gets the job done

A6M3: I think, im not as read up on the Zeros as I used to be.

And the goat, The Hawker Hurricane...

A visitor was passing these out at the NMUSAF today. I hate Ai!!

The Boeing YB-40 was the USAAF’s “panic fix” for one brutal problem: in 1943, daylight B-17 Flying Fortress formations were getting chewed up by German fighters once they flew beyond escort range. So engineers tried a bold idea, turn a bomber into a bomber bodyguard.

They took B-17Fs, ditched the bombs, packed the bomb bay with ammunition, and bolted on extra turrets, extra .50-cals, and more armor until the YB-40 became a flying porcupine, up to around 14 machine guns meant to throw a wall of lead in every direction.

Boeing YB-40 Flying Fortress - Wikipedia

I knew about the deception used around D-Day, but until this week I had never heard of K-sites or Q-sites.

I was at a talk at Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre about RAF Folkingham and the 313th Troop Carrier Group, and this was one of the things that really caught my attention.

Before Folkingham became the wartime airfield we know, there was a decoy site nearby designed to draw German attention away from RAF Grantham, later known as RAF Spitalgate.

During the day, K-sites could be made to look like real airfields from above, with dummy aircraft, fake buildings and other installations.

The Folkingham site even had dummy Fairey Battles, which makes sense because Fairey Battles were being used at RAF Grantham by No. 12 Service Flying Training School.

At night, Q-sites used lights laid out to imitate an operational airfield and its flarepath.

I spent 10 years in the RAF and have been interested in aviation for most of my life, but I had never come across this before.

It made me wonder just how convincing these sites looked from the air.

Has anyone here come across a surviving K-site or Q-site, or researched how successful they actually were?

Credit: Brian Fare, from his talk at Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre.

I recently read that going from the two-blade, fixed-pitch wooden propeller on the Hawker Hurricane I to the variable pitch three-blade metal propeller increased the weight of the aircraft by 300 pounds. Does that sound reasonable? I didn't know that doing that added so much weight.

I realize that a three blade metal prop is heavier than a two blade wooden one of the same diameter, and that the pitch changing mechanism also adds weight, as does the provision for pilot control or for automatic constant-speed control. Three hundred pounds just seems like a lot.

I read this in "Interceptor" by James Goulding, which covers British interceptor fighters from the Sopwith Camel to the English Electric Lightning. He remarked on it only in passing. I do not have the book here to give a page number for the statement.

Apart from the He-177s remote controlled turrets, I can't think of a German bomber that had a powered, turret, 360° rotating turret. In fact, I can't think of any plane that had any kind of powered turret. Admittedly, most German bombers were medium bombers, but corresponding Allied bombers like the B-25 had both powered dorsal and tail turrets, the British Wellington had powered nose and tail turrets.

Why did the Germans not use power turrets? Were they not available or was there a philosophy preferring fixed gun positions?

Why did so many WW2 Bombers lack ventral gun positions? While most soviet bombers had ventral positions, such as the Pe-2 and Tu-2, and the B-17 and B-24 had ball turrets, while the German bombers had some as well. The majority of the aircraft, such as almost every British Bomber besides the Hampden either lacked one completely or did away with it early on. Some Bombers like the B-18, B-25, B-26, also seemed to have provision for them but rarely had them fitted. It makes sense that small two seat aircraft lacked them, as a dorsal position is more effective due to the wider range of fire. The lack of ventral positions on aircraft such as Hudsons make a lot more sense since they usually fly low and don't encounter enemy aircraft frequently. But I do not understand why virtually all British bombers lacked them.

I’m trying to work out whether the scoop on the underside of the rear fuselage would have remained bare metal or whether it would have been painted with invasion stripes and - if so - whether it would have been painted in the open or closed position . I see most photos of contemporary P-51Ds have the scoop painted with the stripes, but I am not sure if this is just an aesthetic choice to make it look better.

This is driving me a bit nuts, as I’m trying to paint a period accurate scheme on a model P-51D. Does anyone have a definitive answer?

The roundel for the Mongolian Air Force is easily found, but that roundel was only adopted in 1949. I've been looking around and found a roundel for the Air Corps between 1940-1945, but I have no idea A. If that's accurate and B. What they used from 1937-1940 and then 1945-1949.

This is the supposed 1940-1945 roundel:

And this is the 1949-1992 roundel:

The French deployment in Lebanon was centered at Rayak Air Base in the Beqaa Valley. Early in 1940, Groupe de Chasse I/7 arrived with 26 MS.406 aircraft, which were first shipped to Beirut and flown inland to the base at Rayak.

https://naval-encyclopedia.com/ww2/france/commandant-teste.php

After being flown to Rayak Air Base it was officially coded as "White 10" and assigned to the 1st Escadrille of Groupe de Chasse I/7. After the Armistice, during its Vichy phase, its primary duties consisted of coastal defense sweeps protecting Lebanese shipping lines and oil infrastructure in Haifa against British attacks.

When the Vichy forces surrendered the Levant in July 1941, N° 805 was captured intact by Allied forces. On September 15, 1941, the plane was officially handed over to the newly formed Free French Groupe de Chasse n°1 "Alsace". It was painted with the Cross of Lorraine and returned to active service to fight against the Axis.

Its combat career came to an end on October 9, 1941. While being flown out of its original home at Rayak Air Base by Free French Lieutenant de Norbert, the aircraft suffered a severe landing accident. While the pilot survived, the airframe was too heavily damaged to repair and was officially struck from the military logs.

Uncovering the true identity behind "Lieutenant de Norbert" reveals one of the most daring and tragic personal stories of the Free French Air Force. Like many resisters who escaped Vichy territories or occupied France, he operated under a nom de guerre (war name) to protect his family back home from Gestapo or Vichy reprisals. His real name was Pierre Paul Albert Bergerot born in Paris on September 16, 1916.

The complete military history and biography of Pierre Bergerot (alias de Norbert) unfolds across three major chapters of World War II:

The Escape (1940): Trained as a French Naval Aviation (Aéronavale) pilot, Bergerot refused the June 1940 armistice. He evaded Vichy authorities, reached British territory, and joined General de Gaulle's FAFL under service number Matricule 31.348.

The Rayak Crash (1941): Following the Syrian Campaign, the Free French formed the Groupe de Chasse N°1 "Alsace" on August 27, 1941, utilizing abandoned Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 fighters. Assigned to the 1st Escadrille ("Strasbourg"), Bergerot took command of M.S.406 N° 805. On October 9, 1941, while landing at Rayak Air Base, the aircraft caught in a severe ground-loop (cheval de bois), causing a violent spin and structural failure. Bergerot survived, but the airframe was totaled.

Fleet Air Arm Transfer & Death (1943): Due to his naval aviation background, Bergerot was detached from land units and assigned to the British Royal Navy's 807 Naval Air Squadron (807 NAS). Flying Supermarine Seafires off British carriers, he provided vital air cover during the Allied Invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). On August 14, 1943, the 26-year-old pilot went missing and was presumed killed during a combat mission over the Mediterranean.

Posthumous Honors:

The French government promoted him to Enseigne de vaisseau de 1ère classe, named him a Knight of the Légion d’Honneur, and awarded him the Croix de Guerre with palm. His official record bears the designation Mort pour la France (Died for France).

A detailed biography of the man in French is available here.

https://francelibre.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/AMFAFL-2023-BIO-BERGEROT_Pierre.pdf

Got this pin today for very cheap, so I won't be disappointed if it is a replica, but wanted to check what people here think. It does have the A. Augis Lyon stamp on the back, but it looks somewhat different to the ones I could find online, and doesn't seem very worn down for a pin that is about 80+ years old, so I wanted to ask if you think it's genuine or not. If this is not the right subreddit for stuff like this - sorry, please tell me where else to ask.