Allied aircraft photos

[Buckeye30]

Hi Stig. Been sorting through the 330th inventory. Seems there were 2 - K-14s with 3 crews assigned them (Ziegele / Locks / Hiles). First was written off in crash on Guam (44-69795, first mission, Ziegele).
Second was 42-94032 "City of San Jose", Locks crew; Hiles' crew flew 42-93980 (K-8) "City of St. Petersburg", when she was grounded they took over 42-94032 K-14 as "My Gal the II". I did get one wrong " City of St. Petersburg".
The 330th roster doesn't have a K-44 assigned, there was a K-43 44-69799, lost 13 April from Tokyo.


Regards
Nick

[Stig Jarlevik]

Well Nick

I don't have any "rooster of 330BG" access so I can't argue with that.
However it certainly disagrees with what Robert Mann published in his B-29 book
Is this "rooster" online somewhere?
Main problem is, as I see it, there is no photo evidence since either you get a photo of the front
(no s/n visible) or the rear (usually neither s/n nor name visible)
So what remains is to put together known unit codes (Square K + digits in this case)
From experience I know that so called first hand sources are not always 100% reliable.
I don't know in this case which sources Mann used (he lists an awful lot of sources in his book),
but I doubt he chose his code digits out of the blue, so basically what remains are either
your source is a printing error or Mann's is. I have no way of telling which one is, although
I have made a choice with regard to K14 (see below)

But if we take the problems I listed and first look at my thoughts about pic no 4
My assumption is that whoever took the photos located by Ed did so either just before the
end of WW 2 or just after.
Thus pic 4 falls outside the scope of being lost 12 April 1945 meaning it is far more likely
to be 42-94032 than 44-69795
Admittedly, since Mann says 44-69795 initially was K43 it feels odd it should have suddenly gained K44
Codes K43 and K44 would have been within the same BS while K14 means it was transferred to
another BS within the BG, so yes I agree with your source and I have corrected Mann's K44 to K14
but I still believe pic 4 was 42-94032

With regard to if the names were painted or not on 44-69795 when it was lost on 12 April,
I would say, yes they were! Aircraft was delivered to 330BG 31 Jan 1945 so there was ample
time to decorate the aircraft.

I also agree that more than one aircraft used the same unit code, so no problem with two
K14 or any other digit combination, but as I said above, not at the same time!

When it comes to which names the individual aircraft had your source and Mann's differ.
I have no way of knowing why that is so, which means I find it useless for me to argue with your
source.

Cheers
Stig

[Buckeye30]

Thanks Stig. I'm sure you are right about photo 4; she has a yellow letter, they only started from about mid-July so not 795 lost in April. Unless there was a third K-14 (pretty sure there wasn't) this must be 032. The crash photos of 44-69795 show an unpainted letter, just masked off.
42-94032 "My Gal the II" photo 1 has 30 missions with "THE END" after the 30th, which would have been late-war.
Not a big deal really! Regards
Nick

[Stig Jarlevik]

Agree Nick

But sometimes it is good fun....

Cheers
Stig