World War II fighter pilot Quentin Aanenson, who produced a documentary on his wartime experiences that aired widely on public television, died Dec. 28 of cancer, reports Associated Press. He was 87. According to a Washington Post report (requires free registration), Aanenson flew some 75 combat missions, the first on D-Day, mostly in P-47s of the 366th Fighter Group. He left the Army Air Forces after the war, becoming a life insurance executive, but in the early 1990s, he documented his war experiences in a video titled “A Fighter Pilot’s Story” that first aired on WETA in November 1993. Later, Aanenson would work with filmmaker Ken Burns on his 2007 documentary “The War.”
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…