Where can you buy authentic WWII aircraft manuals, VHS tapes including WWII gun camera footage, simulations, and other unusual flight related items? At Planestuff.

Max at Planestuff sent me a few of his manuals to check out, and they are impressive! I have a P51-D manual, a Boeing B17 manual, and a P38 and P47 manual. Max also sent me an unusual item: an F4 manual in a ring binder that must be over 400 pages!

The above image is scanned from page 38 of the B17 manual, and shows the complete instrument layout in the Boeing B17G. For an excerpt from the text of this manual, go to B17 Starting Procedures. A scan of the checklist follows below:

But there is lots more, and the image below comes from page 12 of the P51 manual, showing a rendering of the Merlin engine. The gunsight follows at the top of the page, right hand column.

Click to continue

K14A Computing Sight

Max also took the time to transfer some Gun Camera Footage to the .mov format (3.2 MB 7 minutes.) Click the link to view it. The clips below are from a very close range encounter with a Boeing B17.

The footage is original German WWII Luftwaffe gun camera footage assembled by the Luftwaffe Air Combat School in 1944. It was transferred from WWII German 16mm film onto quality VHS format. This footage is believed to be unavailable from normal archive sources.

The video contains 36 minutes of unrestored, silent black and white film dramatically showing attacks and destruction/shootdowns of American, British, and Russian bombers and fighters. Much of the action occurs among aircraft of the 8th Air Force during their daylight raids over Germany. Attacks on P38, P47, and P51 AAF fighters are shown, as well as RAF and Soviet Air Force fighters and bombers being shown shot down by ME 109's, FW 190's, and ME 110's.

Intel Indeo 5.0 - AVI Format 640x480

• 23.6 MB
• 13.1 MB Latter half of the above, contains most of the action.
• 8.5 MB Latter third of the above. Contains the up close footage.
• 6.85 MB Almost the same as the last one, a bit shorter.
• 3.7 MB Identical to short footage but in 480x320.

You will need Windows Media Player or RealPlayer Plus G2 to view these files. To download the Intel Indeo 5 CODEC click HERE.

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