Aviator and documentary filmmaker Kate Broug and Captain S. Davis Alford don’t belong to the generation who lived through the Second World War. Yet, they have dedicated themselves to memorializing that era through the historic machines they preserve.
Broug, born in Amsterdam to a family of artists, flies and maintains a 1943 Boeing Stearman, the same training aircraft that taught literally thousands of Allied pilots to fly during the War. Alford, originally from North Carolina, is the captain of R/V ROBERT GRAY, a WWII research vessel that continues to operate in the same role today.
Broug and Alford first met at the famed Explorers Club, a New York institution founded in 1904. The Club’s ranks have included explorers, scientists, and pioneers such as Jane Goodall, Buzz Aldrin, Sir Edmund Hilary and Theodore Roosevelt. Long serving as a crossroads for leaders at the center of science, adventure, and discovery, the Club provides a common point of reference for the free exchange of ideas and the advancement of human society.
Alford first noticed Broug at the Club giving a talk during 2025 Climate Week. Broug spoke about her collaboration in the use of drone technology by Indigenous communities in the Amazon Rainforest to monitor and protect their ancestral lands. At one point, Broug mentioned that she flies and preserves a 1943 Boeing Stearman biplane. For Alford, that fact sparked his common interest as a historical preservationist.
The two introduced themselves, discovering they were both members of the same generation, both caretakers of machines from the Second World War, and both eager to preserve the memories of a vanishing and vital period. That they met almost by accident at an Explorers Club lecture hall seems the very kind of encounter the Club has been producing for more than a century.
Their work is not about discovering new continents or unexplored corners of the map. Instead, they focus on something more fragile: preserving the memory of a time that soon will have no living witnesses. As the generation that fought World War II disappears, the stories of that era risk becoming distant and abstract. Broug and Alford see historic machines as a means to keep those stories tangible and present.
Alford often reflects on how quickly historical memory fades. “When I talk to younger people about Auschwitz,” he says, “some of them ask if it’s an amusement park.” His point is simple. Once witnesses are gone, remembering becomes the responsibility of those who remain.
Broug and Alford’s new initiative Air & Sea, a public lecture and educational program focused on preserving WWII artifacts, grew from that realization.
Their first event took place on February 13, 2026 aboard R/V ROBERT GRAY at Lower Manhattan’s Pier 25. Moderated by Explorer’s Club President and Discovery Channel host Richard Wiese, the evening brought together historians, filmmakers, explorers, and members of the public to discuss the role historic machines can play in telling the story of the War.
After the gathering quickly sold out, Broug and Alford hope to bring their concept to other cities through lectures, educational programming, and similar events.
Their aim is straightforward. As Broug explains, it’s to keep the War that claimed more than sixty million lives front and center in our current discourse.
“As a journalist I’m always interested in what moves people,” Broug says. “It’s important to remember that humans are capable of terrible things. We are capable of waging global war. That feels especially relevant today.”
For Broug, the subject runs even deeper. With both her maternal and paternal grandparents surviving the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the War almost literally runs through her DNA.She represents the air side of theAir & Sea initiative. Broug, a NYC-based Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS), first drew nationwide attention in 2024 when she flew her eighty year old Stearman open cockpit biplane across the United States.
Her journey covered 3,700 miles over ten days and retraced routes flown by female aviators in WWII’s Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs).
Broug’s aircraft itself has become central to her storytelling. Her most recent documentary series First Flights with Kate Broug has reached millions of viewers online, exploring the connection between aviation, exploration, and conservation.
Broug’s earlier film work also focuses on wartime history. In her 2022 documentary short The Missing Airmen of WWII, she collaborated with the Dutch government, the Royal Netherlands Air Force, and the Study Group Dutch Air War to document the Netherlands’ aircraft recovery program, which locates the remains of missing Allied airmen and provides them with proper burial.
At sea, Alford approaches preservation in much the same vein.
R/VROBERT GRAY, built in 1936, remains a working research vessel under his stewardship. Rather than turning the ship into a museum piece, Alford and his Business partner Leila Davenport Ross operate it through their LLC The Voyagers Club in collaboration with the nonprofit VC Expeditions, using the vessel for research projects and educational programs.
Over the decades the ship has served as a research vessel, a wartime reconnaissance ship, and later a working tug. Alford’s connection to the era is also personal. Both of his grandfathers and his maternal great-grandfather served during the Second World War- all within the United States Navy.
That family history informs a sense of responsibility toward preserving the machines and stories of the past. The fact that saltwater so clearly runs in his veins naturally steered him on a course to preservation efforts for the era on the water. Maintaining a vessel nearly 90 years old requires constant care. Steel, engines, navigation systems, and structure must all be tended. Historic machines survive only when someone is willing to take responsibility for them.
Together, Broug’s Stearman and Alford’s R/V ROBERT GRAY offer two different but complementary ways of keeping our WWII past relevant to the present. One flies. The other sails. Their work together reflects a broader shift in modern exploration. Today’s explorers are not only searching for new frontiers; they also are working to preserve the stories that shaped the world in which we live.
As the last generation of wartime witnesses passes away, that responsibility becomes even more urgent.