I received this DVD free as a volunteer to try products and write reviews for EAA’s Sport Aviation Magazine.
The DVD runs 62 minutes and is narrated by Hugh Downs a legendary broadcaster with multi-engine and balloon ratings.
Mission: Dawn Patrol is a video account of three pilots who flew aircraft of the Vintage Aero Flying Museum in Hudson, CO to the Dawn Patrol Rendezvous of WWI aircraft at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
The photography is excellent and the story is punctuated with actual clips of the planes in action and biographies of the pilots who flew them in WWI.
The pilots in the DVD and the airplanes that they flew are:
- Fokker DR-1 (Triplane) – Mark Holiday
- Fokker D-VII – Dan Murray
- Fokker D-VIII – Andrew King
These planes, WWI fighting machines, were designed to fly sorties about an hour long. This effort was to fly them 1100 miles to Dayton – and back. They had a chase plane and two vans following them with parts and mechanics. It was a monumental effort that has been documented beautifully – even the unfortunate landing accident.
If the DVD only documented the effort to take the planes to Dayton and back it would be worth your time to watch – with great air-to-air photography, comments by the pilot, and the addition of actual WWI movie footage, interviews and pilot biographies make it a valuable aviation history lesson.
I recommend this DVD to anybody who is an advocate of sport aviation and/or antique aircraft. The link above is an affiliate link to purchase the DVD from Amazon.