For anyone interested in the Flying Tigers, here is a collection covering the pilots, P-40s, historical photographs, and the transition from the AVG to the 23rd Fighter Group and Fourteenth Air Force. Disclosure: this is my site.

https://lkn-law.com/world-war-ii/marco-polo-bridge/flying-tigers/

On Veterans Day, November 11th, 10 Good Men streams worldwide on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. Hope you guys will go watch it! It is fantastic. It took the crew three years of constant work to find these heroes, interview them, and produce this film to tell their final stories. Will post the trailers here next week!

Equipped with a FuG 218 Neptun radar system featuring the distinctive "Hirschgeweih" (stag's antlers) dipole antenna array on the nose.

2 man crew consisting of a pilot and a dedicated radar operator/navigator.

Later captured by allied forces and marked with USAAF foreign evaluation number FE-610.

Phantom Mustang (F-51D) – Plastic see-through model kit by Monogram
- Scale: 3/8 inch 1 foot
- Wingspan: 14 inches
- Includes two electric motors

Up for auction on HiBid MaxSold. (Can put link in a comment if interested but wanted to avoid including a commercial link.)

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: “On 1 April 1945, 1st Lt. Richard P. Sulzbach of Sioux City, Iowa, led his formation down to strafe enemy vehicles on a road In Northern Italy. The flight destroyed 8 and damaged 8 more vehicles. But the leader, intent on making a successful attack regardless of his own safety, could not pull his ship up before he was forced to fly through a clump of trees, picking up limbs, bark and leaves in the wings and fuselage of this Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt came home. The next day Lt. Sulzbach was out again. He shot down two enemy fighters -- an ME-109 and a FW-190 -- proving he can fly high too.”

Handwritten notes indicate he was later shot down between the lines north of Bologna on 20 Apr 1945. He was being strafed by German fighters after making a belly landing when two GIs in a speeding jeep yelled to him, “Jump in, you son of a bitch!” The jeep did not stop and he had to jump in on the run. “Sulz” was a flight leader and survived the war.

(NARA 342-FH_001507, 342-FH_001509, 342-FH_001511, 342-FH_001505)

The Me 410 has jettisoned its canopy for the crew to bail out.
Stears accumulated 3.5 victories after October 3, 1943 before he himself was shot down and captured on April 9, 1944.

The DPAA announced in 2025 a recovery of 4 MIAs from a crash site in Poland. The official announcements mention field investigations between 2008 and 2012, then in 2017 and 2018, and excavations between 2019 and 2025. I researched this crew and the crash site between 2003 and 2011, and I supported the DPAA predecessor’s work, including participating in one of early field investigations.

The identified airmen were T/Sgt Donald A. Dorman, S/Sgt Robert A. Keuchel, S/Sgt Rae G. DeMatteis, S/Sgt Stephen J. Fatur. They were all members of the 1st Lt. Andrew F. Crane crew (2nd Bomb Group, 15th AF) which flew the B-17 #44-8191 on a mission to Ruhland (Germany) on March 22nd 1945.

I believe my research helped the US government link a crash site to the right aircraft, which triggered the recoveries and identifications.
This was the most complex research case I ever had, as nothing was even close to obvious.

If you want to find out more about my research, visit my Reddit profile.