Colonel Fred J Christensen was an American World War 2 flying ace, thought to be the last surviving one until he died in April 2006. He flew P-47 Thunderbolts with the 56th Fighter Group, known as the Wolfpack, and is credited with shooting down 22.5 German warplanes, including an amazing six in just a few minutes of one day in 1944. From early in 1943 the Wolfpack was based in Britain. Christensen attributed much of his good luck to a small black kitten he had found and adopted while in Britain; he called it Sinbad and it flew in the cockpit with him on many of his missions  not at high altitude, which could have harmed it, but the Thunderbolt in any case flew mostly on lower-altitude ground support sorties. One of the colonel's daughters, Diane Haagensen, said that seeing her father return safe and sound, complete with Sinbad, was a great help in motivating other pilots. On one occasion a war correspondent and photographer visited the base to do a feature on the Wolfpack, and of course wanted a picture of Sinbad  but the cat played hard to get and kept leaping around and cavorting among the stack of parachutes! Eventually a photo was obtained (second left) and it's reported that all the pilots whose parachutes Sinbad touched that day returned safely, many with victories to their credit. Naturally this increased the cat's prestige and reputation for being lucky. Sinbad survived the flying unscathed and in September 1944 returned with Christensen to the United States, when his tour of duty ended, to live with his family  and surprised them all by producing kittens! Sinbad had been a female all along, and went on to have several litters of youngsters. Sadly, as with all too many cats, and having survived the perils of WW2 flying, she was killed by a car in the early 1950s. The top photo of Sinbad and Fred Christensen in the aircraft cockpit was taken in a Spitfire, not a Thunderbolt. The reason isn't clear, but the 56th did use Spitfires for training although not for combat missions. Maybe it was considered appropriate that a British kitten was photographed in a British plane. The colour image is from a short sequence taken with Christensen's own home movie camera. British Pathé has two clips taken in July 1944 during the Wolfpack's time in Britain, about a week after Christensen had downed six planes in minutes. It seems likely to have been 'staged' footage following this notable achievement, and both show a black cat who we assume must be Sinbad being held affectionately by Christensen (two other cats are also in some scenes), but one that includes closeups of the pair becomes quite shaky to watch. This would have been not too long before the pair returned to the US in September 1944. Pathé Clip 1 | Pathé Clip 2 | Boston Globe | New York Times | AcePilots | Veteran Tributes

Warm thanks to Kent Jeffrey for supplying information and images.