On This Day…November 23rd.

Boone Guyton was a prolific test pilot, flying over 100 different types and marks of aircraft. This photo is him flying the V-173 (Flying Pancake) on 23rd November, 1942. He flew for Vought as a test pilot for over ten years and died at the age of 83, having survived flying, without doubt, some of the world’s most dangerous aircraft.

A great colour scheme for someone...on November 23rd, 2009 the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex rolled out this beauty, the JF-17...

A US Army Sargeant of Army North, 15th Army Group, having Thanksgiving Day dinner. Italy, 23rd November, 1944.

Atmospheric photo capturing a Vietnamese monsoon drenching men of the U.S. First Infantry Division as an Army helicopter waits for weather to clear 50 miles northwest of Saigon, Vietnam, on November 23, 1965.

A great many of these OTD photos capture poignant moments between battles. That old chestnut ‘war is long periods of boredom between moments of sheer terror’ - or, as is said in the British Army, “get on the bus, get off the bus, get on the bus, get off the bus, get on the bus, GET OFF THE BUS!l”.
In the early hours of the morning this Avro Lancaster B Mark III (JB362 ‘EA-D’ - ‘D for Donald’) of No. 49 Squadron RAF taxis to its dispersal point at Fiskerton, Lincolnshire, after returning from the greatest and most destructive raid mounted on Berlin to date (22/23 November 1943). Pilot H. Blunt and his crew arrived safely back at their base after this biggest of raids, only to be shot down with loss of all crew in “D for Donald” when returning from their next visit to Berlin, Germany on 27 November 1943.

M3 medium tank of D Company, 2nd Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment, US 1st Division at Souk el Arba, Tunisia, 23 Nov 1942.