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Paul Bellamy
8/11/2008 7:29:57 AM | In the "Aircraft Nicknames without a related Serial Number" section of the Assigned Aircraft page is "My Achin' Back".
No serial number or squadron code is listed as known for this aircraft.
Now the high resolution copies of the 401st's photos held by the National Archives are available free online, I pulled up the A-2 Jacket art:
The B-17 looks to have the squadron code IW-S... I'll enlarge that bit to make sure.....:
IW-S it is.
There are two known aircraft to carry that code:
44-6145 "Cover Girl" with 35 recorded missions between 12 Jun 1944 and 7 Oct 1944.
44-6947 with 11 recorded missions between 10 Mar 1945 and 10 May 1945.
Could "Achin' Back" have been one of these two, or could there have been another aircraft with the IW-S code between October 1944 and May 1945?
EDIT
Using my spreadsheet I've just noticed that if 44-6145 IW-S was named "Cover Girl", that would mean two aircraft in the same squadron had that name at the same time.
42-107151 IW-B is also listed as "Cover Girl", being assigned on 15 Apr 1944, returning to the USA on 8 Jun 1945 with 105 recorded missions behind her.
Could IW-S have been misread or misprinted in place of IW-B or vice versa?
Could 44-6145 IW-S actually be "Achin Back" rather than a second "Cover Girl"?
To further confuse the issue, the photograph is dated 24th October 1944, seventeen days after 44-6145 was lost. However, she was not flying with any of her more regular crews aboard, so this jacket may have belonged to one of those such as Lt H.P. Lerwick's Crew.
All the best,
Paul
Paul Bellamy
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donaldbyers
8/11/2008 9:14:26 AM | Thats a good spot their Paul. As far as I can remember you can get duplicate names but that is when they are in different groups not within the same group unless it's like Cover Girl II and so on. But those are normally done after the loss of the preceding name.
Don
Sgt. Donald C. Byers, 613th Bomb Squadron, Togglier, 42-97344 Carrie B II, KIA 08/24/1944.
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EDanaII
8/11/2008 12:14:09 PM | Yep, definitely a good catch, Paul.
If you confirm it for certain, let me know and I'll gladly update my copy of the 401st DB to reflect the new information.
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win-win
8/17/2008 1:10:35 PM | Paul:
Question: Some NARA photos (captuions, mostly) have a 'received' date which is not the 'photo' date (date taken). Not to confuse things (but confusion is my middle-name) could 'received' dates for these two A/C account for any overlap/duplication?
Win
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Paul Bellamy
8/17/2008 1:40:11 PM | Hi Win,
The Received Date, usually on the card surrounding the photo, is usually irrelevant to when the photo was taken. It is simply when a batch of a unit's photos was passed to another higher unit etc. for archiving.
In many cases of the 401st's photos this is June 1945, after the images for the Blue Book were compiled.
The dates on the captions, where a date is given, can be out by a day or so, and may in some cases be when the imade was developed and captioned.
The Aircraft Assignment, Arrival and Loss dates are usually correct as they will come from a number of Official Records (Aircraft Record Cards, Unit Strength Reports, etc.) which were maintained a lot more accurately that the indexing of photographs. 😉
All the best,
Paul
Paul Bellamy
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Paul Bellamy
5/21/2011 1:22:12 PM | More musings on this subject.
I may well be clutching at straws here, but bear with me... 😉
Looking at the three 614th aircraft with Back in the nickname, here's a hypothetical timeline which may add to the theory that 44-6145 was My Achin' Back rather than a duplicate Cover Girl.
15th April 1944:
42-107151 IW-B Cover Girl arrives at Deenethorpe.
29th April 1944:
42-107210 IW-N Be Coming Back arrives at Deenethorpe.
12th June 1944:
42-107210 IW-N Be Coming Back scrapped on site after bomb explosion.
44-6145 IW-S My Achin' Back arrives at Deenethorpe as a replacement.
7th October 1944:
44-6145 IW-S My Achin' Back lost on Politz mission.
11th October 1944:
43-38738 IW-N Becomin' Back / Gaposis arrives at Deenethorpe as a replacement.
I'll have to look at the loading lists more closely to see if there is a continuation of crews through the crossovers, or maybe a common crew chief.
Thoughts?
All the best,
Paul
Paul Bellamy
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Paul Bellamy
9/27/2011 6:05:17 PM | Another avenue of investigation has opened up, well actually the info has been here on the forum for quite some time and I'd completely forgotten to follow it up... 🤦
Thanks to a post by Shade Ruff (where did he go?), the Combat Mess wall panel for Cover Girl had two crew lists on it:
Capt Kenney
Lt Evans
Lt Fowler
Lt Wilson
T/Sgt Cohen
T/Sgt Dixon
S/Sgt Hambright
S/Sgt Higbee
Sgt Elliott
See the Capt J.R. Kenney crew page for a 42-107151 Cover Girl connection.
Lt Silverstein
Lt Farquhar
Lt Crickenberger
Lt Schliefer
S/Sgt Gravel
S/Sgt Datson
S/Sgt Landwehr
Sgt Bergstrom
Sgt Dias
Sgt Meyers
See the Lt H.F. Silverstein crew page for something interesting regarding both 42-107151 and 44-6145, and possibly the souce of the nickname duplication...
All the best,
Paul
Paul Bellamy
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