Airborne Gallery

D-Day - Glider reinforcement team

A team of paratroopers amuse themselves whilst awaiting the call to take flight in their glider to back up the initial assault phase on the Normandy coast. The chalk slogan reads: The Channel stopped you, but not us - now it's our turn. You've had your time you German Swinhunds'! D-Day began on June 6th, 1944 at 6:30am and was conducted in two assault phases - the air assault landing of allied troops followed by an amphibious assault by infantry. The Normandy landings were the largest single-day amphibious actions ever undertaken, involving close to 400, 000 military and naval personnel"

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10282392

British Sentry keeping watch on Nijmegen Bridge; Second Worl

Photograph showing aan Irish Guardsman keeping watch on the Bridge at Nijmegen, September 1944. On 17th September 1944 Operation Market Garden was put into action; a bold plan devised by Field-Marshal Montgomery to drop thousands of airborne troops into Holland to capture an invasion route into Germany. The British First Airborne, American 81st and 101st Divisions took part in the plan, which was ultimately unsuccessful. This photographed was staged (for the Illustrated London News) and the soldier is James Lawler of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. The sentry box was previously manned by Germans and a picture of the Fuhrer can be seen, still pinned to the side of the wooden position. Apparently the ILN correspondent had to be encouraged to make the high ascent to the box by ladder as he was scared of heights!!

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10218099

Possible UFO sighting in Ireland

Was it an Irish flying saucer or merely an airborne leprechaun? A double-page spread relating to an incident that occurred in County Waterford, Ireland on the 26th December 1965. Jacqueline Wingfield and her friend Lisbet Mortensen were travelling by car when they spotted a bright object passing steadily from right to left across the sky in front of them; if not a UFO this could possibly have been a parhelion, or sun dog caused by the reflection and refraction of sunlight from clouds of ice crystals

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10272206