I always had an interest in WW II avaition from the first time I saw the Blue Angels fly,( many moons ago) at the Glenview Naval air base, 20 miles north of Chigago. A base used in WW II to train Naval Pilots in Lake Maichigan,for carrier landings and dive bombing techniques,etc. IL-2 for the last 7-8 years has, if nothing else provided us with forum to share historical perspective . If there was an interest, I thought forum members could post WW II avaition stories of interest but less publicized. Heres one that I founding interesting, please add your own:

Freeing American POW’s from Captivity


Thousands of American and Allied prisoners of war had been sent by the Japanese to prisoner of war camps in occupied China. American planners knew that main bodies of American troops would be unable to quickly reach these camps in the event of a Japanese surrender, and there were disturbing reports of Japanese plans to kill the prisoners. Quickly, detachments of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) were organized to parachute into the camps and to order the Japanese garrisons to release them. Long-range aircraft of the Fourteenth and Twentieth Air Forces airdropped supplies on the camps to provide nourishment, medicine, and hope.

The six- or seven-man teams – many of which included a Japanese-American interpreter -- were ready a week after the Emperor’s broadcast of surrender. They took off from Xi’an. Magpie jumped into Beijing, Duck to Weixian in Shandong Province, Sparrow into Shanghai, Flamingo to Harbin, Cardinal to Shenyang (“Mukden”), and Pigeon to Hainan Island.

Each team had its own remarkable stories to tell. Here’s one. Cardinal was taken captive on landing in Shenyang, put in a luxury hotel overnight, and freed the next day. They gave the news of the end of the war to 1600 American, British, Australian, and Dutch prisoners and prepared them for their return home. They learned that Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, the commander of the American troops in the Philippines in 1942, and Lieutenant General A. E. Percival, who had surrendered the British troops in Singapore earlier the same year, were held in another camp 150 miles north of Shenyang. A doctor and a corporal traveled by rail to Si’an to set them free.

After more than three years of hard captivity, General Wainwright and General Percival stood on deck of the USS Missouri on September 3, 1945, witnesses to the unconditional surrender of Japan. When General MacArthur signed the instrument of surrender, he gave the pens to the two men who had been freed in Si’an

Excellent, a really unknown story there.

Nice story, thanks.

I alway womder if Percival really was an incompetant commander, or he just ran out of supplies.

he gets some really bad press/write ups and was seemingly the 'scapegoat' of the Singapore affair. There can be no doubt that he was receiving few supplies as the priority was Germany in 1941. He had no air firce and was being bombed daily.

heres how Wikipedia puts it :-

'Percival's surrender to the invading Imperial Japanese Army force was and remains the largest capitulation in British military history, and it permanently undermined Britain's prestige as an imperial power in the Far East.[1][2] However, current knowledge about the years of under-funding of Malaya's defences and the inexperienced, under-equipped nature of the Commonwealth army makes it possible to hold a more sympathetic view of his command'

I havent read up too much on the subject of singapore, maybe others can comment on Percivals situation, was he incompetant, or just the scapegoat?