Formation of U.S. 8th Air Force B-17 bombers in flight over Germany during World War 2.Gunners firing 50 caliber machine guns from various positions in a B-17, as attacking German interceptor aircraft race past. One German aircraft is hit and pieces of it fall off. B-17 enters bombing run. View of bombardier and bomb sight image. German aircraft continue attacks and gunners continue defending as the bombardier announces "bombs away." This is a high altitude mission and all crew members are on oxygen. Glimpse of pilot and copilot in cockpit. Pilot alerts gunners to a German FW-190 aircraft attacking them. Waist gunners pause to look at a German fighter smoking, as it falls, and strikes the ground in an explosion. Sequence shifts to formation of B-24 Liberator bomber on a mission with bombs visible dropping from bomb bays. Sequence shifts again, rapidly, to a formation of B-29 Superfortress bombers dropping bombs. Nighttime view of incendiary clusters being dropped on Japan. (Note: One of the B-29s seen is serial number 42-24547, assigned to the 6th Bomb Group, 315th Bomb Wing. This B-29 crashed short of the runway on 31 Dec 1944, at Borinquen Field, Puerto Rico, where the 6th bomb Group underwent combat crew training. And the B-29s shown do not display any tail codes.)
President Herbert Hoover on the U.S. Battleship Arizona (BB-39) headed to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The President's flag flies on the ship. Crew of the Arizona drape themselves across the superstructure and guns of the battleship to be photographed with President Hoover. The President seated in a wicker chair at the center of the picture. President Hoover visits Charlotte Amalie, the Capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands. A sailor jumps onto the dock from the boat carrying the President. Herbert Hoover is met by the Virgin Islands Governor, Paul Pearson. who escorts him to a car. Hoover gets into the car with Governor Pearson and they proceed in a motorcade through Charlotte Amalie. The sidewalks are filled with spectators. President Hoover and the Governor Pearson watch a parade of students from a raised gazebo in a park.
In San Francisco California, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr. poses with his wife on dock after his return from scientific expedition to Indo-China and Tibet, San Francisco. The Colonel has recently been appointed as the Governor-General of Puerto Rico.
Admiral Harold R Stark takes over the post of Chief of Naval operations, succeeding Admiral William D Leahy, newly appointed Governor General of Puerto Rico in Washington DC. Former Secretary of State Francis B Sayre, new commissioner to the Philippines, leaves the White House with ex-commissioner Paul V McNutt, after a conference with President Roosevelt.
The Cincinnati Reds baseball team disembarks from a Pan American Sikorsky S-40 flying boat in Miami, after a flight from Puerto Rico, March 1936. Players in Reds uniforms climb off boat. Sign on flying boat reads "Pan American Airways System." Players toss and lightly hit baseballs on a field near the shore. Close up of Reds pitcher Paul Derringer (#25). (NOTES: This was one of the first times a baseball team traveled by air. The Reds held part of their spring training in San Juan in 1936.)
A public television program by the U.S. Army entitled 'The Big Picture.' U.S. troops are seen hunkered down and looking through binoculars in a defensive position in Korea, during the Korean War. American soldiers riding atop a Sherman tank on a city street in Germany, during World War II. Ski troops moving across snowy hill in Alaska. U.S. Army amphibious assault training on a beach in Puerto Rico. Army Master Sergeant Stuart Queen, narrator, speaks about America's defense against threat of atomic attack in these times of lukewarm peace. View of mountainous region in Alaska. A cluster of Cup'it Eskimo dwellings is seen on Nunivak Island, in the Bering Sea. Several of the local inhabitants are fishing through holes cut in the ice. Vapor trails are seen from Soviet aircraft flying at high altitude. A sign on a tarpaulin displaying logo of the Army Signal Corps, reads,"Alaska Communication System, Long Distance Commercial Telephone-Telegraph." A tracked vehicle carries a soldier to a facility posting a sign reading, "Alaska Communications System Receiver Station." Several tall antennas loom above the site. The soldier, dressed in arctic gear, steps from the tracked vehicle and walks past several snow shoes, standing upright in the snow, to enter a white wooden building. Inside, a man in civilian clothes works at a battery of telecomunications equipment. He transmits a message about the aircraft sighting, to the Alaska Communication System facility in Fairbanks Alaska (briefly shown) by means of a telegraph key. From there it is relayed to a Signal Corps facility, shown, in Washington, DC. A soldier is seen Inside that facility, in a room filled with computers and telecommunications equipment. A Sergeant handles paper tape messages being sent and received by teletype. Another soldier plugs connections into a communications switchboard. Next, the camera pans over the entrance to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the Pentagon. More views of soldiers attending banks of teletype machines. Animated map displays paths of orders being transmitted to U.S. Air Defense Centers in San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and Atlanta. View from control room, of several U.S. Air Force F-94 Fighter Interceptor aircraft on an airfield ramp. A controller activates a Klaxon horn and pilots on alert, in the Fighter Interceptor Squadron ready room, jump up and scramble to their aircraft. A pair of F-94s taking off. One is number 51-5385. Next, a U.S. Navy F-9 fighter plane is seen taking off from an airfield. It displays tail code AE. It is followed by another F-9 aircraft.