World War II Chronicle: February 21, 1944
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The front page has a story of two B-17 crew members who perished when they refused to parachute out of their crippled Fort and leave their wounded pilot behind to die alone… On page five, the B-24 named Blue Streak is back in the United States after an impressive career. From the American Air Museum in Britain: Blue Streak “survived 19 months of air battles overseas, and 1,058 combat hours. Her scoreboard reads, one destroyer, one merchant ship, one oil tanker, and 23 enemy aircraft destroyed. She dropped 297 tons of bombs, and never lost a crewman in combat. The plane required 19 engines, two new wings, one new rudder, and many aluminum patches to keep her flying during her career.”
George Fielding Eliot column on page eight… Sports on page 14, featuring a Grantland Rice boxing column… Fairchild Aircraft and Engine announce on page 16 that they have figured out how to bond aluminum and steel, promising remarkable new capabilities in aviation. The Ranger V-770 engine mentioned in the article is an inverted V-12, producing 520 horsepower, and is only used in the Fairchild AT-21 bomber crew trainer and the experimental Bell XP-77 lightweight fighter prototype… Alexander de Seversky column on daylight and nighttime bombing on page 36.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 21 February 1944. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1944-02-21/ed-1/