Issue 28.12
We read in printed matter and see on film about WW2 planes being named and these B-17’s and B-24’s were identified by a name. Sometimes these planes were named after a crewman’s wife or girl friend or a home town or movie or any number of inspirations. We have all seen the movie “Memphis Bell” which name was of the pilot’s girl friend. Perhaps early crews were assigned to a personal plane but when my crew and I were flying our missions over Germany, we did not enjoy such luxury. My combat Squadron had one surviving old B-17 F number 956 among the newer shinier G’s so it wouldn’t have been fair to saddle one crew with a battle damaged, war weary, patched up one year old plane while another crew had a bright new soon off the assembly line plane. Some of the planes in my Squadron had names and pictures of scantily clad ladies painted on their noses and some did not. I guess there were not that many artists in my squadron. Lives of crew members and planes were too iffy to put too much time and effort into painting nose art on a plane. In my squadron about half of the planes had nose art. The B-17, Q799 that my crew claimed and which we flew about half of the time, we named her “Queenie”. We had an amateurish looking “Queenie” painted on her but no picture. I recall a directive that came down from 8th Air Force headquarters that advised our people to make sure the painted forms had enough clothing to be respectable. Varga girls were a favorite but this took a pretty good artist to do the nose justice. All of us flyers had A-2 leather jackets so that is where we put most of our artistic abilities. A combat crew was such a close knit family that we wanted to be identified as such. Crew names were mottos or varied names.
We called our crew “Heaven Can Wait”. We also painted a bomb for each mission flown and a swastika for any confirmed enemy planes shot down by a gunner. We would also sew on a
Squadron and Group patch. Another directive came down from 8th Air Force headquarters to use common sense when painting our jackets because one crew named themselves “Murder
Inc.” after a comic strip of the time. That crew was shot down and some members were P0W’s. The Germans showed pictures of the crewman wearing the jacket and he was paraded around for the civilians to see how terrible and blood thirsty the American flyers were. This
could have been a factor in the way the German civilians would kill a downed flyer if given the chance.