Hello All --
You are cordially invited to drop by Zeno's Warbird Video Drive-In (
http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com) and catch our latest free online World War II aviation triple feature: "The Fight For the Sky," "Thunderbolt!"and "Black Cat PBY." That's over an hour and a half of WW2 winged bliss. And if you're a broadband user, there's a 100 kbs stream with the normal dialup video streams
"Fight For the Sky." In February of 1944, General Jimmy Doolittle "turned loose" his fighters to go after the Luftwaffe where they lived. This marked a radical change in strategy from the disastrous tactics of 1943 that kept escorting fighters chained to bombers. Now, US fighters, including the P-51, probed deep into Germany, catching the opposition on the ground, inflicting mortal damage. This feature combines thrilling combat footage filmed by 8th Air Force combat cameramen with some of the most action packed, down and dirty World War II gun camera film you'll ever see. This is the original, uncut 40-minute version of "The Fight for the Sky" featuring twice the rock 'em sock 'em action of the heavily edited postwar release previously shown at the Drive-In.
"Black Cat PBY." What was that mysterious plane swooping down out of the night sky on unsuspecting Japanese ships and bases, hundreds of miles from any known American airstrip? The answer was, as you'll see in this good humored, affectionate film, the slow, ungainly, but deadly "Black Cat" PBY. Originally designed as a reconnaissance and antisubmarine amphibious patrol plane, the big twin engine Catalina's super long range, all weather capability, capacity to lug both bombs and radar, ability to loiter for hours hunting convoys and operate from anywhere in the watery PTO, made it an ideal naval night attack bomber. One of the least known stories of the war in the Pacific, these black painted PBY "VPB" squadrons spread destruction and chaos far out of proportion to their relatively small numbers. As this film shows, night ops were very risky, but the rewards could be huge, including the sinking of a 6,000 ton Katori class light cruiser by Lt. William B Sumpler, of VPB-33, for which he was awarded the Navy Cross.
"Thunderbolt" This exciting film chronicles the exploits of the P-47 Thunderbolt pilots of the "Fighting Gamenoodles" of the 65th Fighter squadron, 57th Fighter Group. Based on the island of Corsica off the northwest coast of the Italian boot, they flew from behind the enemy's flank. As part of "Operation Strangle," they continuously attacked highways, bridges, ammo dumps, railroads and just about anything that moved to choke off the flow of supplies to the Axis front line. This film not only features one-of-a-kind P-47 combat footage, it also shows day-to-day life on a MTO forward air base, including vintage pilot slang.
If you haven't stopped by Zeno's Drive-In before, we also feature 1942-45 vintage WWII Army & Navy films on how to fly the F4U, F6F, P-38, P-39, P-40, P-47, P-51, P-61, TBF/TBM, B-17, B-24, B-25, A-20, A-26, B-26, B-29, and more.We just added the SNJ/AT-6 "Harvard" trainer too.
That's over 12 hours of rockin' props *all for free viewing over the internet.* See detailed charts,diagrams, and interior photos from original WWII pilot's manuals too.
Finally, our "Control Tower" page has the largest collection of World War II Aviation links on the 'net
So drop your flaps & drop in!
That's
http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.comZeno
