In support of an official event 

The Museum will be closed Sunday, May 25
In addition, the Fourth Hangar will be closed Saturday, May 24

Access to the Presidential Gallery will be limited from May 15 to June 5
 

Fact Sheet Alphabetical List

Fact Sheet Search

  • Escape and Evasion Accounts

    Doolittle Raiders After bombing Japan on April 18, 1942, all but one of the sixteen B-25 Doolittle Raid crews crashed or bailed out in China (The remaining crew landed in the USSR, and they successfully escaped internment in 1943). Thanks to the generous help of the Chinese people, 64 of the 75

  • Tools of the Trade

    USAAF airmen were supplied with many tools to help them evade the enemy if they were downed or to escape from POW camps if they were captured. In addition to these, ingenious POWs made their own from material at hand.Evasion PursesEvasion purses were issued to aircrews before they flew over enemy

  • MIS-X: The U.S. Escape and Evasion Experts

    Modeled on the British escape branch M.I.9, the top secret MIS-X (Military Intelligence Service-X) organization gave U.S. service personnel formal training and special tools for escape and evasion. Their efforts helped those airmen who were evading and those who had become POWs. MIS-X craftsmen

  • A Successful Evasion

    Second Lt. Ralph K. Patton, a B-17 copilot, was one of thousands to evade capture with the help of the citizens and the Allied intelligence network in western Europe. Shot down by enemy fighters and anti-aircraft fire over western France on Jan. 5, 1944, he evaded for three days until picked up by

  • Primary Evasion Lines in Western Europe

    The three major evasion lines in western Europe were the Pat Line (also known as the O'Leary or P.A.O. Line), the Comet Line and the Shelburne Line.Click here to return to Winged Boot: Escape and Evasion in World War II.

  • The Kindness of Strangers: Escape Routes and the Resistance

    Resistance movements in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia worked with Allied intelligence to form escape networks. Countless other Europeans acted independently to help downed airmen. At the risk of death and torture to themselves and to their families from the Gestapo

  • Winged Boot: Escape and Evasion in World War II

    Air operations during World War II were often conducted far behind enemy lines, and thousands of U.S. Army Air Forces airmen evaded capture after they were brought down. Some of those who were captured escaped from prison camps and made their way back to Allied territory. Escape and evasion during

  • VE Day! Victory in Europe

    By April 1945, the German Army was shattered. On April 25, American and Soviet forces met at the Elbe River. Five days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. His successor, Admiral Karl Doenitz, sent Gen. Alfred Jodl to the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary

  • Defeat from the Sky

    The combined efforts of the 8th, 9th and 15th Air Forces were a vital contribution to the final Allied victory in Europe. The primary foe of the Army Air Forces (AAF) in Europe, the Luftwaffe, was destroyed as it unsuccessfully tried to defend the Reich.For the last six months of the war, AAF

  • A Test of Courage: 1st Lt. Jack W. Mathis

    Note:  This exhibit has temporarily been removed from display.The U.S. Army Air Forces planned to use daylight strategic bombardment to cripple the Nazi war effort in Europe, and the bloody campaign started in earnest in early 1943. Quickly, the courage and willingness of American Airmen to