[restrict] Friday, May 8, 2020 is the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (V-E) Day. World War II veterans will watch from the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. as approximately 100 WWII airplanes conduct a Flyover in tribute to them, the millions on the Home Front who created the “Great Arsenal of Democracy,” and the millions of soldiers and civilians in Allied countries who united in victory to liberate Europe.

Placid Lassie, a WWII C-47, is ready to take off from Oxford, Connecticut on media day in May 2019 before flying to Normandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one of 15 C-47 D-Day Squadron aircraft that flew the same Blue Spruce route over the North Atlantic as the WWII aircraft did 75 years ago. (Photo: (c) Student News Net)

Below is a May 16, 2019 interview with David Hamilton, the sole surviving D-Day Pathfinder pilot. Twenty C-47 Pathfinders departed England shortly after midnight on June 6, 1944 to mark seven drop zones in Normandy for the thousands of paratroopers who would begin the D-Day invasion minutes later. Last summer the D-Day Squadron of fifteen C-47 planes took off from Oxford, Connecticut to retrace the Blue Spruce route across the Atlantic Ocean to England.

From an air base in England, the planes, with Hamilton riding in one of the “Gooney Birds,” then flew across the English Channel to Normandy to honor the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

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