Images of the 1940s

1. 1940’s A Look Into the Past Speakers on Glenn Millers “In the Mood” Click to Advance

2. Crossroads Store, Juke Joint and Gas Station, Melrose, Louisiana, 1940

3. Adolf Hitler visits Paris with architect Albert Speer (left) June 23, 1940. Hitler’s army had captured Paris, and he came to admire his new city.

4. Workers Parking Lot at San Diego Airplane Factory, 1940

5. This picture was taken on September 16, 1941 at Vinnitza, Ukraine and was found in the personal file of a German Einsatzgruppen soldier. On the back of the picture he had noted, “This is the last Jew of Vinnitza”. 28,000 Jews from the city and surrounding area were shot on that day by the Einsatzkommando (a sub-group of the five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads responsible for systematically killing Jews and Soviet political activists).

6. Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

7. Elm Street, Theater Row in Dallas, January 1942

8. WW2 Doolittle Launch on Japan, April 18, 1942

9. Curtis P-40 Flying Tiger Squadron. The Flying Tigers Were Credited With Destroying Nearly 300 Enemy Aircraft While Losing Only 14 Pilots on Combat Missions

10. Consolidated’s B-24 Liberator – The B-24 was built in two Consolidated plants. Production was also licensed to Douglas, North American and Ford. At its peak, Ford’s Willow Run plant was producing 428 planes a month. A total of over 18,000 planes were produced by the five plants. Today, only three B-24s remain in flying condition and there are only about 10 in museums. The planes were flown by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. A good number of the museum planes were salvaged from India’s bone yard.

11. WASPs (Women’s Air Service Pilots) walking past the B-17 flying fortress known as Pistol Packing Mama. In WW2 they shuttled airplanes from factories, served as test pilots and delivered supplies by air. They trained out of Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, now the home of the WASP museum.

12. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942

13. March 6, 1943. Germans Explore a British Lancaster Bomber, Downed During an Air Raid on Berlin

14. Alcan Highway 1942

15. Bell Aircraft Corporation P-63 Kingcobras undergoing final Inspection at the Niagara Falls, New York factory. The planes were built for Russia and provided under the Lend-Lease program. Air Transport Command ferry pilots, including U.S. women pilots of the WASP program flew the planes to Great Falls, Montana and then onward via the Alaska-Siberia Route through Canada to Nome, Alaska where Soviet ferry pilots, many of them women, would take delivery of the aircraft and fly them over the Bering Strait to Russia. A total of 2,397 aircraft were delivered. The United States restricted the theaters that the planes could be used in, however, once the Russians had possession of the planes, they used them where they pleased, perhaps they couldn’t understand English. On the other hand it may have been that in the midst of a war you just do what you need to do. A concept not foreign to American commanders like Patton and MacArthur

16. B-24 Bomber Assembly c. 1943

17. 1943 - Sons of the Pioneers Top - Tim Spencer, Hugh Farr, Karl Farr and Ken Carson Bottom - Bob Nolan, Roy Rogers and Pat Brady

18. Auschwitz

19. Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band at the Yale Bowl

22. May 2, 1945, Soviet Soldiers Raising a Soviet Flag on the Roof of the Reichstag in Berlin

23. Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that Delivered the First Atomic Bomb

24. Cologne

25. Times Square Celebration of the end of the war. The soldier and the nurse are unknown but people have come forward to claim the fame. Apparently the nurse slapped the soldier immediately after.

26. Making Ice Cream for a Church Social, Yanceyville, North Carolina