American Spitfire Recon Squadron

Check out their line of headsets, camera cables, and LED lighting today!
CRAZEDpilotLogoSmall

Spitfire

This is my humble contribution to the blogging in formation series. 

Inspired by the video that I will link to at the end of this post, I wanted to summarize this incredible story of aerial courage and daring.

After the United States entered the European theatre, it would have been a strange sight indeed to see an American pilot flying a Spitfire, but it did happen. These squadrons weren’t just any old Spitfire outfits, they were flying highly modified Mark XIs that were used for a very specific purpose.

The daring young men who flew these machines would sit in them eight hours at a time and fly up at 30,000’. Their mission was to fly perfectly straight lines while being shot at by German flak and later ME-262 jet fighters.

The Mark XI would be completely unarmed and unarmored, exchanging these “conveniences” for fuel and photo reconnaissance equipment. The small fragile airplanes with their high powered Merlin engines would plunge deep into enemy territory on a daily basis, going all the way to Berlin at times. They painted their machines a distinctive light blue to avoid detection from the ground. And they always flew alone…

Early, before America’s entry to the war, England would use these reconnaissance squadrons to ferret out locations of deadly weapons such as the V-2 buzz bombs that terrorized England. Under Operation Crossbow, bombing mission were successful in crippling the German arsenals which helped turn the tide of the war. Much of the credit goes to the British Spitfire Reconnaissance squadrons for locating those targets.

They flew deep into the heart of German with only their wits and the speed of the Spitfire as their defense. I am always intrigued when I learn about how unsung heroes, such as this are uncovered. We always read about Chuck Yeager, Bob Hoover and Bud Anderson mixing it up with the Jerry’s over the skies of Europe, but without other less-known squadrons carrying out their mission, the war may have turned out very differently.

The video is extremely well produced and you will not regret spending the next 15 minutes watching it – I promise! Consider it a personal history lesson.



#blogformationINTRODUCTION
This week, six aviation bloggers will again join forces to provide a series of common posts. Think of us as “blogging in formation” (#blogformation) for the next six days. This month’s theme will be – Aviation History in honor of November being official aviation history month.

You don’t want to miss this. Tune in to the specific blog listed below on the appropriate date and you’ll be glad you did.

And if you like what you see, share it with your friends! #blogformation

You can see the posts at:

The series runs from November 1 – 6, 2013.

VISIT OUR SPONSOR for Training DVD's, affordable headsets, cable adapters, headset parts, LED strobes and lights, and more! They cover ALL EXPENSES for iFLYblog.com to keep it coming FREE to you FOREVER!

CRAZEDpilotLogoSmall

 

Subscribe to the iFlyBLOG Mailing List to get the latest blog posts and news to your E-Mail instantly! PLUS TWO FREE eBooks!

learning to fly

 

Tags
Written by
  • Brent Owens
Share it