A couple of questions.

From Roger Freeman's The B-17 Flying Fortress Story:
 
B-17G 44-8324 was delivered to the AAF at Kearney, NE, on 10 Aug 44; Assigned to Albuquerque, NM, 15 Aug 44; Grenier, NH, 2 Sept 44; assigned to the 493rd BS/91BG Bassingbourn, England, 12 Sept 44; Flew 60+ missions; Returned to US 11 June 45; South Plains 16 June 45; RFC at Kingman, AZ, 4 Dec 45. 
 
This airplane was apparently renamed "Blood and Guts."  An illustration of this airplane can be found on the back cover of Squadron/Signal's B-17 in Action book. 
 
Squadron Code on aircraft was LL-R.
 
Good Luck
 
TM

Frank,

Photo of a portion of Gypsie's nose attached.  The bomb symbols within the 'arrow' would represent individual mission sorties.  In this case, 38 bombing missions.  The lighter color bomb symbols painted lower down are a mystery to me.
 
Regrading when crew photos were taken I would expect that would be a moving target and be different from one Bomb Group to another.  Many times crews would be photographed alongside whatever aircraft was handy.   A crew would set up, have their picture taken then move away and the next crew would set up, have their picture taken, etc.  It was a lot easier to move the crews than to move the aircraft or the photographer.  You can go through the crew photos on Fold3 and see a number of places where 6 or 8 crew photos in a row were taken in front of the same nose art.  Also the theory of crews being assigned specific aircraft pops up here periodically.  In reality a crew flew whatever aircraft they were told to fly on any given mission.  While crews frequently flew many on their missions on a given aircraft and even gave that aircraft a name, it was not truly 'their' aircraft.  My father flew 20 of his 33 missions on a single aircraft but in that period while he was flying those missions 5 other crews also flew on that aircraft.
 
Hal
 
 

 
 

A lapse between missions could have been caused by illness. In Johns case, there was a lapse of about three weeks between missions. John had wrote home, he had been grounded because of a severe cold. Years ago, Jim Peters of this forum wrote, a cold and high altitude did not mix too well on the bearer and was reason to ground an him untill recovery from same.. 

Thank you one and all for taking the time to respond to my questions.  The answers and comments you posted have been very helpful to me in the pursuit of my immediate goal, which is to identify all the crewmen shown in "Gypsie's" crew photo. So far, only my father and pilot Lt Holmes have been identified.
 
My thoughts were that since I have my fathers flight log, and the newly completed and transcribed 401st dailies, I could establish a date for the crew photo and compare it to the load lists, and  thus be on my way to matching names with faces.
 
This is what I know so far: A/C 44-8324 was delivered to the 91st BG on 12 Sept '44, Dad's first mission on Gypsie was the very next day, 13 Sept '44, hardly enough time for 38 missions.
 
From an annotation accompanying a photo of "Blood N' Guts in flight it is noted, "Originally named "Gypsie", she was renamed in early 1945".  Clearly Gypsie was renamed sometime after her 38th mission, as Blood N' Guts was spelled out in 2 ft tall, bright red letters extending from the lower fuselage to above the wing, just below the pilot's side window. Impossible to miss. Until I found, quite by accident, the photo below, I had never heard of Gypsie. Dad had always told me 'His plane' was Blood N' Guts, and indeed,  that was the name emblazoned on the back of his A-2 jacket, in which he was laid to rest in 1981.
 
So, it's back to the dailies for me. I will count 38 missions from A/C 44-8324's first mission and  try to narrow down names on the load lists to match with faces in the crew photo, and from there search for living crew members, or surviving descendents.
 
Thanks again everyone,
 
Frank 
 
P.S. When I have completed this, I will start over with the next crew of 'unknowns'. Sadly, it seems I won't have far to look. None should be forgotten.
 
 

Hal...There WAS one instance where a new replacement  aircraft was sent on the next day's mission...the 2nd BG 5th Wing, 15th AF, had this happen...one entire squadron of the 2nd BG was lost on a mission...the story is told in a book by Melvin McGuire and Robert Hadley, called Bloody Skies....Melvin had arrived on a replacement B-17, and the aircrew was told to immediately get thier gear off the aircraft, as it was needed for a mission the next day.
 
While living  in Phoenix, Arizona, I had made an acquaintance with the daughter of a B-29 bombardier/navigator, and she told me of a friend of hers,who lived in Sedona, Az....he had been shot down on that day when the entire squadron had been shot down.
 
I agree, this was an unusual happening, but, it helps to explain why some aircraft were not marked  in the Bomb group and squadron markings..painting markings took at least one to two days to paint the bomb group and squadron markings...also... some aircraft made only one or two missions prior to being lost on a mission.
 
Jim :-)

sonofatailgunner


I know the '493rd BS' part is in error, so the 12 Sept 44 arrival date could be wrong as well. I haven't personally seen Roger Freeman's book so I'm not 100% sure.

Sure is.  I didnt catch it--just copied it and hit send.  Sorry for the error. 
 
TM. 

Given that exceptions do occur to the normal acceptance procedures due to operational requirements --
Normally anytime a plane is reassigned the receiving organization is required to perform an "acceptance inspection" to insure the airworthness of the incoming airplane
Having no specifics on the details of the object of this discussion, I can only draw on my knowledge of B-29 movements
Herington AAFB, a staging base for B-29's being deployed overseas, had an 'acceptance inspection' for incoming aircraft  that came close to mirroring a 100 hour inspection.  I have a copy 
of what 2nd Air Force (Herington) deemed necessary for the inspection of an incoming plane, and, based on my flight line experience  - said inspection would take, at a minimum, two or three days.
A notable exception to this requirement was the arrival on Saipan of the F-13 "Tokyo Rose"  in October, 1944.  With a desperate need for photos of Japanese cities for misson planning purposes, the crew of Tokyo Rose took off without crew rest or an incoming airpane inspection and took literally thousands of photos.
 
Bob Mann
 

To whom it may concern regarding the receipt of an aircraft one day, and sending it out on a mission the following day....I have learned over the years to not pass judjment on a seemingly impossible story.
 
There are several stories of B-17 tail gunners (from several 8th AF and 15th AF bomb groups) riding the remmnants of a B-17 (about 20 feet of the iail section) to the ground and living to tell of the event.
 
There is another story of a navigator (which was verified) who survived a 88 MM shell passing between his writing hand and his body, in the process punching a hole in the nose section, through his navigator table, (while he was wrting in his logbook).....through his log book, and finally leaving the nose through a hole in the top of the nose section prior to exploding above the B-17....again, this WAS verified by the debreifing officer returning to the aircraft and finding the story verifiied by the holes in the aircraft nose and a similar hole in the navigator's logbook.
 
This occurred in my bomb group and I personnaly witnessed the debreifing officer along with the respective persons involved get up from the debreifing table and return to the aircraft.
 
I would suggest being cautious about leaping to a conclusion, when the facts say otherwise.
 
I might add that this kind of comment usually comes from someone who has never seen combat...but the stories abound about seemiingly impossible feats.
 
Jim :-) 

In the Spring of 1990, I served on a B-17 Panel with a tail gunner named Wes Borgeson. He started his comments by saying, " I completed 1/2 mission during the war ". His B-17 was shot down on his first mission, exploded in the air at 25,000 feet leaving him unconscious in the tail section which he rode to the ground.. He woke up 5 days later in a German POW hospital.

They are called Wreckage Riders.  Check this link for a list of known events:
 
 
www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/wreckage.html
 
TM