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Wings Clipped A short film about Rudy Gabrys, a bombardier in the 448th who was shot down over enemy territory. Click to watch(Either JavaScript is not active or you are using an old version of Adobe Flash Player. Please install the newest Flash Player.) 8th Air Force Archive Film Here’s some nice original footage including [...]

Is there a family member or a friend who served in the USAAF that you would like to pay tribute to? Maybe your father or grandfather served during World War II?  Perhaps you served yourself and would like a friend to be remembered. As part of a future Happy Warriors DVD release we are asking [...]

By using a telephone call recording service I have been able to interview 448th and USAAF veterans from the comfort of my living room. Ideally I would have liked to travel the States filming on-camera interviews in their living rooms but since we’re on a small (micro) budget telephone interviews it is. As a positive [...]

In May 2007 I was lucky enough to attend the 448th Bomb Group’s annual reunion in Orlando, Florida. Ed Chu, a Staff Sergeant in the 714th Bomb Squadron was in attendance and I’d heard what a nice guy he was and also that he told a good story so I was keen to try and [...]

Spurred on by this podcast and this article Happy Warriors will be asking for input from fans (!?) on a range of production elements beginning with poster design. Each call for input will take the form of a blogpost and votes can be cast by commenting. Recent favourites on youtube: The U-Boat Pens at Lorient [...]

Of particular interest is the lexicon of USAAF crew and servicemen. Perhaps the phrase ‘two countries seperated by the same language’ originated in the war years due to the arrival of thousands of US military personel? I got thinking about the 8th’s targets in Western Europe and the nick names they gave them. It’s unclear [...]

It’s stories like this that get me thinking about saving sites of historical importance for future generations. Of course funding is always an issue but it’s  surprising to me that Bletchley Park struggles to find the financial support it needs. Maybe I’m wrong about this but it would seem to me that if Bletchley were [...]

Happy Warriors has today been awarded funding. Great news, can’t wait to kick on with the project. This will allow us to complete some vital interviews with surviving veterans and to film a few reconstruction-style sequences in and around Seething.

I recently had the chance to speak with a British veteran of the Normandy Campaign for a few minutes at the local library. He described landing on the beaches in a Sherman tank and, coming under heavy fire it was eventually destroyed. A small group of them were pinned down for a time with only [...]

Some of the most interesting (and surely terrifying) missions flown by the 448th saw them come under attack by the German jet fighter the Me262. A generally little known but much lauded aircraft among fans the Schwalbe (Swallow) prooved to be a dangerous foe for American bomber crews on their daylight bombing raids. Luckily for [...]