Punchy Powell flew two combat tours with the 352nd Fighter Group — the Bluenosed Bastards of Bodney — in a Mustang with his home state painted on the nose: The West "by Gawd" Virginian. Then he spent the rest of his life collecting his friends' stories so they wouldn't be buried with them. He put them in a book, Bluenoser Tales, with more than four hundred photographs from the group's own archives. The book went out of print. Before he flew west in 2016, he left his son one charge: keep telling the story.

This is the trailer for how we keep it: Bluenoser Tales, retold one story a week in today's language — the veterans' words kept exactly as they said them, nothing invented, every episode from the book. Introduced by his son, Punchy Powell.

The 2026 reprint of Bluenoser Tales is available now at 8af.echoes.news/books/bluenoser, with profits donated to the Eighth Air Force Historical Society and the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. Every season of the series can be dedicated in memory of a 352nd veteran — his name carried by the season and spoken in its closing roll call.