Gil Cohen ROSIE'S CREW Masters of the Air ROSENTHAL SIGNED Aviation Art Print

  
Over 1500 reviews - no worries! Check back as I add auctions for NEW "MASTERS OF THE AIR" related prints, and more Robert Taylor, John Shaw, John Young, James Dietz, Nicolas Trudgian, William S. Phillips, Keith Ferris, Jack Fellows, Harley Copic, Roy Grinnell, Frank Wootton and other aviation art prints. Also, signed & unsigned books, signed WW2 Ace biography sheets from the American Fighter Aces Association, and 1/48 scale kits from companies such as Tamiya, Hasegawa, Eduard, Revell, Monogram, etc. Gil Cohen ROSIE'S CREW THORPE ABBOTTS 1943 ROSENTHAL SIGNED Aviation Art Print. SIZE: 21 by 30 inches. SIGNATURES: Hand-signed and numbered in pencil by the artist Gil Cohen and Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal - featured in the book & miniseries "Masters of the Air". The Certificate of Authenticity is included. Destined to be among the most sought after aviation art print ever published after the miniseries "Masters of the Air" vaults Rosenthal to widespread fame. This print was published way back in 2001.

After "Masters of the Air", it would not be surprising to see this print compete with the most sought after prints in the aviation art genre such as Robert Taylor's "JG-52" and John Shaw's "Higher Call". I suppose Rosenthal's signature will be much like Dick Winters' signature after the "Band of Brothers" series made him a household name. The key difference is Rosenthal signed far fewer things than Winters did, since Rosenthal became famous long after his passing. Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal briefs his crew on last minute details before boarding "Rosie's Riveters, " a B-17 of the 418th Squadron, 100th Bomb Group, Eighth U. This was the first of three tours of duty for "Rosie" with the Bloody One-Hundredth.

Before Germany's surrender, he would fly a total of 52 combat missions and attain the rank of Colonel. Never framed, stored flat in a non-smoking, climate-controlled environment. Check my feedback - it's excellent.

I ask for the same consideration from you. I will pack your print very carefully so it arrives undamaged. Rosenthal was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood. He was the captain of the baseball and football teams of Brooklyn College, graduating in 1938. He graduated from Brooklyn Law School summa cum laude, and had been working at a law firm in Manhattan when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

He enlisted in the United States Army on December 8, and requested to be trained for combat. In August 1943 he joined the 418th Bombardment Squadron, 100th Bombardment Group, stationed at RAF Thorpe Abbotts in England, as a pilot and aircraft commander of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress crew. On the October 10, 1943 mission over Münster, Germany, only the third mission for Rosenthal's crew with the 100th Bombardment Group, the B-17F (s/n 42-6087), nicknamed Royal Flush, that the crew were flying was the only plane out of 13 from the group that reached Münster to return to base. Royal Flush landed back in England with two engines dead, the intercom and the oxygen system non-functional, and with a large ragged hole in the right wing.

Later the ground crews found an unexploded cannon shell in one of Royal Flush's wing tanks. Rosenthal would receive his first Silver Star for this mission. On 8 March 1944, Rosenthal's crew, nicknamed Rosie's Riveters, completed their 25-mission combat tour, although the B-17F (s/n 42-30758) that they usually flew bearing the same name was shot down while being flown by a different crew during the 4 February 1944 mission to Frankfurt, Germany. In May 1944, he took command of the 350th Bombardment Squadron.

On 10 September 1944, Rosenthal's B-17G Terrible Termite (s/n 42-97770), flying on a mission to bomb Nuremberg, was hit by flak and crash-landed around Reims in German-occupied France. Along with all the officers on his plane he was seriously injured. Suffering from a broken arm and nose, he was pulled from the cockpit unconscious by Free French, flown back to England, and woke up at a hospital in Oxford. Rosenthal would receive his second Silver Star after this mission. Rosenthal was assigned to a desk job at wing headquarters, but he managed to return to the 100th Bomb Group and take command of his old squadron, the 418th. On his last combat mission on February 3, 1945, Rosenthal, commanding the 418th, was part of a thousand-plane raid against Berlin.

His B-17G (s/n 44-8379), the lead bomber, suffered a direct flak hit which killed two of his crew. Although his plane was in flames, he continued to the target to drop his payload, then stayed with the plane until after the rest of the crew had bailed out, just before it exploded at an altitude of only about 1,000 feet (300 m).

Rosenthal would earn the Distinguished Service Cross for this mission. Among the buildings hit in the raid was the "People's Court", killing Roland Freisler, the notorious "hanging judge" of the Third Reich's Volksgerichtshof. By the end of his service he had a earned a total of 16 decorations, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star (with cluster), the Distinguished Flying Cross (with cluster), the Air Medal, (with seven clusters), the Purple Heart (with cluster), plus the British Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre. After the war, Rosenthal served as an assistant to the U. Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, where he interrogated Hermann Göring.