56th Fighter Group book from AJ Press - 56th FG museum, Halesworth

From Nigel Julien's FB page;

  " Many people, on both sides of the Atlantic, have been asking both myself and Peter Randall when our book on the 56th Fighter Group is going to be published. A question that both of us have been asking AJ Press for a long time now as well. From our side of things, the text, photos and captions were completed many months ago. The artwork is done, the colour profiles look superb, and all that is left is to dot a few I's and cross a few T's. If anybody and everybody interested in when this book will finally cease to be a PDF file and find its way into bookstores would care to email the publishers direct at aj-press@home.pl then perhaps it will get publsihed sooner. Neither myself or Peter Randall will profit financially from this book. Our "payment" is in a number of copies which will be sold directly by the 56th Fighter Group Museum at Halesworth and monies raised go directly towards the upkeep of this fabulous museum. The decal sheet features 6 P-47's which will be included as 1:72,1:48th and 1:32 scale decals. 5 of these, to the best of our knowledge, have never been made available before, and 1 is appearing with the correct code letter and serial number for the first time..."

 Featured subjects include; P-47D-1-RE 42-7937 LM-Q "Triss" Pilot Anthony Carcione
P-47D-2-RE 42-22456 HV-N "Liberty Belle" Pilot Joseph Curtiss
P-47D-2-RE 42-7975 UN-I Artwork of a Texas state/cowboy hat. Pilot Raymond Petty
P-47D-6-RE 42-74643 UN-Hbar "Ole Puss" Pilot Carroll Wakefield
P-47D-11-RE 42-75410 HV-Mbar "Ole Cock" Pilot Donavon F Smith
P-47D-11-RE 42-75224 HV-Obar "Pengie II" Pilot Boleslaw Gladych

Halesworth Museum Open Day 2012 on this blog

Halesworth Open day Sunday 26 August - 56th FG museum

Recently spent some time at my brother-in-law's place in Framlingham, Suffolk - a beautiful part of the country, full of history - and neat aviation museums. While I was there I went up to the Halesworth 56th FG museum and bumped into Nigel Julian, webmaster of the 56th FG web site and Buzz Took, below, who runs the 56th FG museum on what is left of the old airfield, nowadays owned by Bernard Matthews Ltd.

Not only did I get a personal tour of the museum and the chance to peruse the museum's extensive photo collection on Saturday prior to the Open Day courtesy of Buzz and Nigel, but on the Sunday met Krys Lanowski, son of 56th FG pilot Witold 'Lanny' Lanowski.

 Nigel Julian and Krys Lanowski in the 56th FG museum library at Halesworth, Sunday 26 August 2012

The story of Lanny's amazing wartime career is fully recounted in the seminal book by Danny Morris 'Aces and Wingmen'. Having flown Spitfires with the RAF the Polish pilot was brought to the 56th early in 1944 by Gabreski  - but was never 'officially' recruited as a USAF pilot. He subsequently flew with the 56th without pay throughout the war - rather than accept an instructor's position with the RAF. He achieved four victories in combat and only received his back pay years later after a long campaign. He sadly passed away some 17 years ago.

Model of Lanny's black 'M' built by Nigel Julian. Just visible, the lucky horseshoe 'welded' to the airframe under the windshield!

Late on the Sunday afternoon Maurice Hammond sent over his two P-51s from Hardwick for a flypast/demo - marvellous!

Above; screen clip depicting a 56th FG briefing - note the red line stretching from Halesworth, Suffolk out over the North Sea. "Ramrod to Emden" depicting the Razorbacks of the 56th FG departing on a mission from Halesworth is available to view at this link

http://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.2873