Picture credits: The Roger Freeman Collection IWM

The portraits have been plucked from a collection of more than 15,000 images of the United States Army Air Forces, recently acquired by the IWM [Imperial War Museum] Duxford.

The exhibition coincides with the 70th anniversary of the arrival of US forces at the Cambridgeshire fighter station.

The 78th Fighter Group of the US Eighth Air Force, which moved into RAF Duxford in April 1943, ‘helped changed the course of the Second World War’, said an IWM spokesman.

The show, Somewhere in England: Portraits of the Americans in Britain 1942-1945, will run until the end of the year.

The museum adds: ‘Some of the images have not been seen in public before. They show the range and diversity of the roles undertaken by the men of the United States Army Air Forces and the women of the Women’s Army Corps and the Red Cross – it wasn’t just pilots and ground crew that kept the aircraft flying.

‘We tell the individual stories of these men and women, their wartime experiences in Great Britain and how their own personal war ended.

‘The photographs also capture rare off-duty moments and show how the American airmen became part of the community in which they were based.’


Picture credit: The Roger Freeman Collection IWM