Aero Vintage Books

Looks like that collection might have been broken up. I believe this is 41-2481 Topper at Mareeba.



https://www.ebay.com/itm/304656604632?h ... Sw~d5jQ15b

Look to be just covers. My copy of that photo came from Jake Grimm, the 483rd Bomb Group historian. Unfortunately no further details.

I missed that, good point.

Another photo, presumably of the same B-17G, reveals the last couple of letters of a name, but I can’t immediately recall seeing it before.

This interesting photo from the LIFE collection turned up on Facebook. Nothing specific, but maybe Atsugi and reportedly September 1945. http://img-cdn.filefactory.com/embed/xl/5loexxypd7yy.jpg Dave Osborne’s data doesn’t seem to fit with it being in Japan in September 1945, and Joe Baugher’s list s...

Speaking of Hawaiian Air Force B-17Ds, it appears to me that there were eight operational in Hawaii around the end of December 1941 . . . 40-3060, 40-3071, 40-3082, 40-3084, 40-3085, 40-3089, 40-3090, 40-3092. There are still some questions about these . . . 40-3071 is regularly listed as destroyed ...

I think there’s a pretty good chance that B-17D is this one, 40-3060. http://img-cdn.filefactory.com/embed/xl/4472v656xw34.jpg The bomb-loading photo and this one are two of a series of ACME photos released for publication in early 1942. The captions for the U.S. prints that I’ve seen are dated 7 Ma...

What we do know is that the multi-colored camouflage was applied at Hickam Field, perhaps as part of a wider scheme . . . there's a description of a file box at NARA that intrigued me . . . 384.6 Report of Camouflage for Hickam Field, Oahu, T.H. by the Engineer Board, Fort Belvoir, Va., 5 Jan. 1942....

http://img-cdn.filefactory.com/embed/xl/3li8usxu5u7y.jpg LIFE photographer Bob Landry took this photo of General Clarence L. Tinker not long after his arrival in Hawaii in December 1941. The B-17E in the background has been overpainted in what we’ve come to call the “Hawaiian Air Depot” scheme. Unf...

An interesting photo has turned up on eBay. http://img-cdn.filefactory.com/embed/xl/5u45ovqa7d84.jpg Strait to Hell appears to be 42-97436, the first B17G-15-VE, which completed 79 missions with the 346th Bomb Squadron, 99th Bomb Group. https://www.ebay.com/itm/265842466840?hash=item3de5722018:g:n8I...

That B-17 really got around. First assigned to the 301st Bomb Group in September 1942 where it carried “Eight Ball” artwork on the nose until it was renamed The Reluctant Gremlin (unclear exactly when that happened). It was transferred to the 97th Bomb Group but I don’t know when or why. The 97th re...

And from the other side . . .



The fellow in the pink shirt is Dave Litsinger, who piloted B-17s in the "Ball Boys" squadron of the 351st Bomb Group.

Thanks Scott, that's a really enjoyable memory-jogger.

Here's that photo I took one humid gray morning in the original color . . .

With all the photos gone from earlier posts, I thought it was worth posting this one again.

Twelve years ago some of us were wondering what was on the starboard side of the nose of 41-2440, Calamity Jane . The answer finally arrived in a U.S. Navy image of her at Henderson Field in May 1943 . . . http://img-cdn.filefactory.com/embed/xl/7dxe2kmrqnt6.jpg Just the name, in the same style as ...