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Fighter pilot, documentary filmmaker Aanenson dies


BETHESDA, Md. – Quentin C. Aanenson, a fighter pilot whose wartime experiences helped millions of television viewers understand World War II, has died.

A subject of Ken Burns' documentary "The War" and the producer of his own film a decade earlier, Aanenson died Sunday of cancer at his home in Bethesda, his son, Jerry said. He was 87.

"He lived a magnificent life," Jerry Aanenson said. "He said if he had a chance to be 15 again, he wouldn't take it."

The native of Luverne, Minn., flew 75 combat missions in Europe as a captain in P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. His first was a bombing run on German positions in France on D-Day, before Allied troops landed there, according to a biography posted on the PBS Web site.
He had enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942 and would fly mostly with the 391st Fighter Squadron of the 366th Fighter Group, according to his Web site.

After the war, Aanenson worked as a principal officer for Mutual of New York in the middle Atlantic region; he retired in 1987.

He wrote, filmed and narrated the documentary, "A Fighter Pilot's Story," which related his wartime experiences and was shown on public television around the country starting in 1994.

Aanenson's contributions to Burns' seven-part World War II documentary that aired last year included interviews and letters he sent home to his girlfriend, Jacqueline, whom he later married.

In an interview last year with The Washington Post, Aanenson said, "We went out as a bunch of kids, and we came back maybe looking the same. But inside we were different. Nobody can really know, nobody can really understand it."