aerial operations, american

Explores the extraordinary, enduring commitment among U.S. soldiers to leave no one behind. On the morning of January 20, 1944, Major Marion "Ryan" McCown Jr., a Marine Corps pilot, took off on a dangerous mission against the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. His plane went down that day and was lost in the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea. Fast forward sixty years later as Major George Eyster V found himself in the same sweltering, impenetrable rain forest searching for MIA's. That's not all he would find there.

Olympic runner and World War II bombardier, Louis Zamperini, survived in the open ocean after his plane crashed in the Pacific.

A biography of Olympic runner and World War II bombardier, Louis Zamperini, who had been rambunctious in childhood before succeeding in track and eventually serving in the military, which led to a trial in which he was forced to find a way to survive in the open ocean after being shot down.

During World War II, a few, carefully selected women in the US and the UK were briefly given the unprecedented opportunity to fly military aircraft. Yet the story of these pioneer women pilots is made even more intriguing by the fact that, despite many notable similarities in the utilization and organization of the women in their respective countries, they experienced radically different fates.

Fifteen-year-old Yoshi Kobayashi faces the destruction of everything she knows and a new life living among the enemy, after American bombers attack her city with with napalm, leaving the city in ruins.

During World War II military leaders worried how the public would react to color production films, afraid the the brutal images would erode public support if seen. The films in this video have been researched from declassified footage sources throughout the world and digitally restored. Highlights include a B-17 bombing raid over Europe directed by filmmaker William Wyler, the battle of Midway shot by the director John Ford, and the brutal combat at Saipan, Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Profiles the African-American men who served as pilots in the Tuskegee Airmen unit during World War II.