Issue 2.12
We lucked out on our first mission and were assigned to fly in Q799 which we named “Queenie”. This was also Queenie’s first mission. The day our crew got to the Air Base at Polebrook, we walked into our assigned barracks and hadn’t even set our bags down when we heard someone say “It looks like we have new meat assigned to this barracks”.
That comment didn’t sound too good to us. It sounded to us that they didn’t expect us to have a long stay. They also said “We should get new planes”. That was nothing new because the group got new crews and new B-I7’s every week or more often. The group flew mostly B-17 “G’s” but there were a few old painted “F’s”. When I say “old”, I mean that the “F’s” had survived combat for about a year so they were really patched up. No one liked to fly in old “956”
After we had flown about three missions, and on a day that the 508th squadron stood down, I think it was our Squadron Commander that borrowed old Queenie. He took a few ranking officers and about 6 nurses from the base hospital and went for a joy ride. Someone later commented that he made our “Queenie” do everything that a B-25 could do.
When he landed, all on board filed out of the waist door. Those nurses were all very pale and while climbing out of the plane, the ground crew chief went inside to see if everything was alright. He was greeted by the overpowering smell of vomit. There was vomit everywhere. Before the Officers and nurses could get into the jeeps to get then away, the ground crew chief, who was probably a tech sergeant, called them all back and instructed them that according to regulations, everyone had to clean up their own vomit.
He wouldn’t take no for an answer even from a bird Colonel, so all of them got back into “Queenie” with buckets of water and rags and cleaned up their own mess. The word traveled through the whole base like wildfire and all got a good laugh except the ones wielding the buckets and rags.
Parnell’s crew flew many different planes but we probably flew in Queenie about half of our missions. After that acrobatic episode, Robert Parnell and John Kihm both said it never handled the same and was difficult to ”trim”. All of us could hear Queenie creak quite often.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.