It was early on a quiet morning on June the 10th, 1944. The sun is rising slowly over an airfield near Fogia in Italy. Forty six P-38 Lightnings of the “82nd Fighter Group” (95th, 96th, and 97th Squadrons) are preparing for for an attack against Oil facilities in Ploesti, Romania, 600 miles away.

Despite valiant efforts by the British Expeditionary Force and the forces of France, Belgium and their allies, the German Wehrmacht had swept through western Europe in a series of lightning advances, utterly defeating all who stood in their path. The battered and wounded elements of the combined allied forces were forced to retreat, taking position near the French city of Dunkirk in late May 1940.

The CR.42 Falco (“Falcon”) flew for the first time on May 23rd, 1938. Fiat’s chief test pilot Valentino Cus took to the skies over Turin in an aircraft that would become legendary. It was the most advanced biplane fighter around, but unfortunately for the Falco, the age of monoplanes had already dawned.

Khalkhin Gol, Nomonhan or the Soviet-Japanese Border war, to most people of an english speaking background, any way you say it it means a little known place between Mongolia and China, a river on the Eurasian Steppes, but in 1939 it was the site of a definitive and world changing set of battles.

The first public manifest to create an Air Force for Brazil, started in 1928 when Major Lysias Rodrigues wrote an article titled “Uma necessidade premente: o ministério do ar” (an imperious need: the ministry of the air).

Glenn Hammond Curtiss (born May 21, 1878 –  died July 23, 1930) was born in Hammondsport, N.Y. He was an American aviation pioneer and a founder of the U.S. aircraft industry. He began his career as a bicycle racer and builder before moving on to motorcycles. As early as 1904, he began to manufacture engines for airships. In 1908 Curtiss joined the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), a pioneering research group, founded by Alexander Graham Bell at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia to build flying machines.

The Finnish Air Force was first formed during the Finnish Civil War of 1918. Both Red and White Finland acquired aircraft, but the date when White Finland received a Thulin Typ D from Sweden is celebrated as the date the FAF was first formed: March 6th 1918.

With war waging across the sands of North Africa between the British and the Germans and Italians, the Mediterranean quickly became a vitally important theatre of war in its own right. The British had significant bases of operation at Gibraltar at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, and Alexandria in Egypt. Between these two powerful bases lay the lonely island of Malta, a strategically vital stepping stone in the Mediterranean.