Hungarian firemen attend to business at a bombed out building in Budapest during 1944.

Firemen at Work, Budapest, 1944

The above is an authentic photo collage composed of original WW2 photographs, depicting in his wartime surroundings Lieutenant László (Ladislaus) MOLNÁR, a fighter-ace of the Royal Hungarian Air Force. From August, 1943, he piloted mainly Me-109G's on the Eastern front, where heavy enemy AA fire damaged his craft and wounded him. Still, during next January, Molnár accomplished the rare feat of downing four Soviet planes in one day -- three IL-2's and one LA-5. With 18 confirmed kills, he was  soon awarded major military decorations -- two Hungarian and two German.

Molnár next joined the &quot;Puma&quot; fighter group stationed near Lake Balaton in western Hungary, accumulating 7 more kills while intercepting fleets of USAAF bombers and their fighter escorts. &quot;You have to muster all of your courage,&quot; when flying into the blasting guns of a bomber formation, he wrote to his parents shortly before his death on August 7, 1944. On that day his &quot;Gustav&quot; was disabled by a Mustang and he was reportedly machine-gunned to death during his parachute descent. 

All told, in the brief course of about a year, this dutiful twenty-three-year-old flyer accomplished a total of 25 confirmed enemy kills during 132 sorties flown. Lieutenant László Molnár was laid to rest with military honors near the city of Sopron, having died as the most successful Hungarian fighter-ace at the time. May he and all the fallen flyers on both sides rest in peace.

Hungarian Fighter-Ace Molnár, 1944 -- Collage

A fleet of USAAF B-17's is on a bombing run over the city of Debrecen located in eastern Hungary. The main target was military-industrial, but civilian sections suffered heavily also. There were two major USAAF aerial attacks carried out on the city, one in June and one in September, 1944. (The poster is a local eyewitness survivor.)