A Daring Flight on D-Day - the Extraordinary Story of Thomas Beike
Channel: Historic Wings
Date: 06/06/2021

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Leutnant Thomas Beike and two other Luftwaffe pilots in Me 109Gs took off to fly a fast reconnaissance mission over Normandy to assess the Allied invasion.  He took off into a sky filled with Allied aircraft.  The other two Messerschmitts were shot down almost immediately, but at full power, he slipped away.  The D-Day beaches were straight ahead.  This is his story.

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ORIGINAL STORY AT:
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Thomas Van Hare has published over 450 articles on aviation history since 1997 at Historic Wings - http://www.historicwings.com/. He is an author, including along with Matt Lawrence, of the bestselling book, "Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & the Cuban Five", about the shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue in 1996. He serves as the Director of the Defense Technology Innovation Program LLC, a public-private partnership with the Pentagon that scouts, identifies, and brings breakthrough technologies for potential military use. He is a former three-time White House appointee working in foreign policy, national security, and defense, a former CEO of an airline and flew as a command pilot and mission director on search and rescue missions, saving over 3,000 lives.

Betrayal: Clinton, Castro & the Cuban Five has been published in English and Spanish and is available at:  https://amzn.to/3uPL8GK

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Story Research and Photo Credits:  National Archives and Records Administration + US Navy + US Coast Guard + Imperial War Museums + 368thfightergroup.com + National Museum of the United States Air Force + World War Collectibles + Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-649-5355-02 / Heinz [Heins] / CC-BY-SA 3.0 + luftwaffe.cz + Riegele Wirtshaus + Robert Capa / Magnum Photos + WW2 US Medical Research Centre + Library of Congress + Hubertl, Papperlapap, Markus G. Klötzer, Namrood, XanonymusX and Thomas Fries / Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Music Credits:  First Light - Atch https://soundcloud.com/atch-music
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/-first-light
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/0SVbJldc5wM

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