Earlier this week, I released a brand new short documentary on the career of P-51 Mustang Ace Major Goerge Early Preddy. Today, I am releasing all of the behind the scenes content and research from that production! In case you haven't seen the video, you might want to watch that first! It can be found here:
BEHIND THE SCENES:
First off, let's dive into some of the historical notes! So let me go ahead and explain some decisions here in this production regarding liveries. In this film, we cover two of Preddy's aircraft. The first is his P-47 Thunderbolt. This was a razorback model and had the typical olive drab paint scheme used by many 8th Air Force fighter groups at the time.
His first aircraft, pictured above, was named "Cripes A' Mighty" after his favorite saying during games of craps. Pictured below is our recreated version of the aircraft used in the documentary.
In nearly all of my documentaries, we have to recreate most of these skins and liveries from scratch. It is a tedious and sometimes expensive process, but nose art is one of my favorite areas of study in history - so I always try to make them accurate!
As can be seen in the photo from our video above, there is one kill marking on the side of Preddy's Thunderbolt. This first victory was achieved in December of 1943. Below, I hunted down Preddy's exact encounter report from this engagement and his first official kill claim. I wasn't able to include it in the video, but it is an interesting read!
Following this, Preddy switched to his first P-51 Mustang. In my video, I present this as a D model - but that isn't necessarily accurate. In reality, Preddy for just a short time, flew the B model of the Mustang, which he named "Cripes A' Mighty 2nd"—however, this would have been difficult for us in the recreation - so we opted to just go straight to D model. Here are photos of his B model which he used for just a few weeks.
Instead of showing this one, we went straight into his D model - the iconic Blue Nose version, and his famous mission on August 6th of 1944. Here, Preddy would shoot down 6 German aircraft in an incredible mission. I was also able (thanks to my friend at the National Archives) to hunt down some of the real gun camera footage from his plane on this mission! Below is the entire unedited sequence from George Preddy's famous mission from the National Archives. Quality is a little poor, but this footage was shot 80 years ago!
Also, here is the encounter report from this mission in case anyone wants to see what it was like shooting down SIX aircraft in a single mission!
Now - one interesting thing here is that the final pilot Preddy shot down was apparently a skilled veteran based on his flying. I have tried to look up and ID who this pilot might have been based on loss reports, but it is quite hard to do so. If I can successfully ID him, I will include it in the next letter!
Finally, here is a newspaper excerpt from Preddy's final mission on Christmas Day, 1945. This news was devastating for many back home, especially those in his home state of North Carolina.
While I continue to search for more stories to tell, your support on Patreon would be greatly appreciated! Lately, more and more AI "history" channels have been popping up on YouTube (including some that have even stolen my content). This unfortunately means that it is more important than ever to have supporters to help fund my work here. Plus, get all sorts of behind-the-scenes content! You can join here: TJ3 History Patreon!
That is all I have for today - hopefully this provides some unique insights into all the the work that goes into crafting these videos. Thanks for reading, and I will talk to you guys soon!
Please reply with your thoughts or feedback here! Here's to saving more history together.
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-Your friend TJ
