(Courtesy of Wikipedia)
It's time to celebrate my 35th year of earning my wings at Gansner Field in Quincy, California.
Just five years ago, I celebrated my 30th anniversary of earning my wings by recalling my first flight at Chico Municipal Airport and then completing my training under two crop duster pilots, Tom Rahn and Johnnie Miller, operators of Sugarpine Aviators.
Today, I would like to pay tribute to a World War II 'hero', the B-26, Marauder, a Twin-Engine Medium bomber designed by Peyton Magruder, then built by the Glenn L.Martin Company and first used in the Pacific Theater in early 1942, then in North Africa and finally in Western Europe.
5,288 of them were built by the Glenn Martin Corporation between February 1941 and March 1945 at a cost of $102, 000 per plane.
They were known for their high survival rate. The Marauders flew on over 130,000 missions and had a loss rate of LESS than 1 per cent, the lowest of any USAAF bomber.
"Above All"-- they were instrumental in destroying the Nazi war machine.
Stephen Spielberg
Click on the above you tube video to watch 1945 footage
of B-26 Marauders in flight with soaring music
(courtesy of the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Kudos to the AOPA PILOT MAGAZINE on its feature article B-26 Marauder: World War II's Unsung Hero , Mastering Martin's Marauder in its September 2015 issue. (click here to read)
