Corgi Douglas C 47A Skytrain Night Fright 5th

With the long-anticipated invasion of Europe now imminent, some new arrivals turned up at US Station 466 Membury airfield in the last few days of May 1944, the paratroopers of the famous 101st Airborne Division ‘Screaming Eagles’, members of the 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion and a detachment of the 326th Airborne Medical Company. These men would be putting their lives in the hands of the crews of the home based Douglas C-47 crews, but would have trained exhaustively for the historic mission which lay ahead of them. Many would take part in detailed briefings to give them information regarding flight routes, timings, drop-zones and known enemy anti-aircraft gun locations and on 3rd June, base personnel were given orders to paint black and white stripes around the rear fuselage and wings of all their aircraft.With so many aircraft in the air at the same time and with this possibility of friendly-fire casualties resulting not only from aircraft attack, but from ground and seaborne anti-aircraft fire, Allied D-Day planners called for ‘invasion stripes’ to be painted on the majority of Allied aircraft, in an effort to clearly identify them to other friendly units. For everyone involved in this momentous day, the situation was now crystal clear – ‘if it ain’t got stripes, shoot it down’. In order to prevent German spies and reconnaissance aircraft from discovering this black and white secret, the plan was a matter of the utmost secrecy and was only divulged in the days immediately prior to invasion, i