WWII aircraft from the original documents

History's
Back Pages

When pilots landed on the wrong side, the enemy flew their aircraft and wrote everything down. Every video here is built from those test reports, handbooks and archive film.

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Fw 190 cockpit drawing from the 1943 Luftwaffe handbookCaptured
Fw 190 A cockpit · Luftwaffe handbook D.(Luft) T. 2190, 1943

Latest files

FILE HBP-15
10 Nov 2026 · 18:14

What a German Ace Said After Flying US Captured Fighters

Watch →FILE HBP-14
6 Nov 2026 · 16:02

P-47 vs a Fw 190: What the 1943 Test Reports Actually Said

Watch →FILE HBP-13
3 Nov 2026 · 7:30

7 Things a German Test Pilot Found Strange About the Captured P-47

Watch →

All files and sourcesSubscribe on YouTube

Cover of Flown by the Enemy
The book · in preparation

Flown by the Enemy

The full RAF, American and German test reports from the videos, transcribed from the originals. Each chapter tells the story of one captured aircraft, prints the report with notes in the margin, and shows the cockpit and engine in the manufacturers' own technical drawings, labelled in English.

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Memo · How the videos are made
From: History's Back Pages · To: Viewers
  1. Research and script. Drafted with AI tools from the documents listed on the sources page. Every claim should trace back to one of them.
  2. Narration. An AI clone of my own voice.
  3. Pictures. Archive film and photos from the U.S. National Archives, the Imperial War Museums and the Bundesarchiv, credited on each video. Diagrams are labelled as illustrations.
  4. Errors. Comment on the video with the timestamp and a source. If it's wrong, it goes in the corrections log.