Roger A. Freeman (11 May 1928 – 7 October 2005) was a British military aviation historian specialising in US Eighth Air Force operations during World War II.
[citation needed] The teenage Freeman also took bicycle rides to see other airfields in the East Anglian counties of Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk, and collated aircraft identification numbers – a hobby that once led to a security alert and a warning from his headmaster at Colchester High School.
[citation needed] Freeman recalled a sight in February 1945, the sheer scale of which set him on a course to writing a book about the US Eighth Air Force.
"[1] Formed in 1942, the Eighth Air Force could muster more than 3,000 bombers and fighters by 1944, and operated from some 60 airfields in what Freeman called the "greater East Anglia area" of Britain.
[4] Meanwhile, his knowledge led to consultancy roles for many TV documentaries and the job of technical adviser for the 1989 David Puttnam/Catherine Wyler film Memphis Belle.