WWII Airplanes

On May 8, 2015, in Washington DC, an unprecedented collection of World War Two airplanes flew over the National Mall.
We were there to record the event. Recorded from three different setups; a fixed position Sanken CSS-5 about 2000 feet below and 200 yards away as the planes passed from right to left; directly under as the planes passed overhead, recorded with a fixed position Mid Side pair of Sennheisers (matrixed to stereo), and a Schoeps cmc6-41 following the planes as they flew overhead.

Many years ago we worked on the series “Wings” for Discovery Channel. The show had a lot of footage from newsreels with no usable sound, so we had to scour as many collections as we could to come up with the sounds for each episode. Often, due to budget and schedule constraints, we simply had to make do with what we had or creatively fake what wasn’t available. This collection here, while certainly not exhaustive, would have been immensely helpful for that series. Hopefully, It will come in handy for your project.

Each year fewer and fewer of these planes remain in working condition (in fact, one had to make an emergency landing this day), so we are happy we were able to have the opportunity to make these recordings and share them with you.

The 19 different planes included in the collection are:

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing PT–17 Stearman
Beechcraft AT-11 Kansan,
Consolidated B–24 Liberator, Consolidated PBY Catalina,
Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, Curtis P-40 Warhawk,
Douglas A-26 Invader, Douglas C-47 R4D Skytrain, Douglas SBD Dauntless
Grumman TBM Avenger, Grumman F4F FM2 Wildcat,
Lockheed P-38 Lightning,
North American P–51 Mustang, North American B–25 Mitchell Bomber, North American T-6 Texan
Piper L-4 Grasshopper,
Vought F4U Corsair.