Wikiwander.

Did you know that Roald Dahl, who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was a British agent in America before our entry into WWII? He also was a fighter pilot, who crashed his Gloster Gladiator during an emergency landing in the Libyan desert.

The Gladiator was the last biplane fighter to see service with the RAF before being replaced by more modern aircraft such as the Supermarine Spitfire. The Spitfire was an amazingly successful design; its only real weakness was short legs that prevented it from serving as a long-range escort for the daylight bombing raids of the U.S. Army Air Force. Everyone knows about the B-17s of the Eighth Air Force and their brave crews, but fewer people know that the Consolidated B-24 Liberator played an equally big role with the Mighty Eighth.

Commanding one of those B-24s over Germany was a man who had to put on weight to enlist in the USAAF as a private before we entered the war. His flying skills got him a commission, and by a combination of wrangling and pleading, the man who would retire from the USAF Reserve in 1968 as a Brigadier General was allowed to fly in combat against the Hun like he wanted. He's better known for his other career, though, because Jimmy Stewart wasn't a half bad actor, either.