It’s easy to get choked up imagining how Russian River vintner Joe Anderson felt to fly a World War II-vintage airplane over Normandy on Thursday, while everyone back home in Sonoma County slept.

It was still the wee hours in California when Anderson was scheduled to fly in formation with other modified Douglas DC-3 airliners only about 1,000 feet above the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. The occasion: the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.