This stunning combat art reveals what aerial warfare was like during World War II

Thanks to the digital camera, battlefield artists are quickly fading in relevance.

But handcrafted battlefield art often best evokes the realities of past armed conflict. Art from the skies of World War II is an fascinating genre unto itself.

Check out this blast-from-the-past aerial-combat art, a portal into the way aerial warfare used to be waged.

This post is originally by Geoffrey Ingersoll and Robert Johnson

Until the arrival of dedicated units like the US Army Air Corps' "Burma Bridge Busters," low-level attacks on Japanese supply lines were carried out by Royal Air Force Hurricane fighter-bombers like the ones shown taking out a bridge here.

Outraged when his guns jammed and determined to take down his foe, Parker Dupouy slammed his fighter into a Japanese plane to take it down.

Way less precise, way more aggressive.

In 1940, while the US still enjoyed relative peace, the Brits battled for the skies over England.