mjmikelson
Recruit
- 6
- Jan 5, 2011
My uncle was a tail gunner in a B-29, he was in the 482 squadron of the 505 bomb group flying out of north field Tinian. He was shot down over Tokyo on May25/26 1945. This was only his second mission and his crew was flying lead! His plane was named "Peachy" Our family doesn't know much about his time in the Mariannas. Anything you would like to share about being a gunner on a Superfortress would be appreciated.
Thanks
Did you find out info on this plane and Mission? If not, let me know as I have a fair amount of info on it. Your uncle's crew was the alternate crew for that plane--not the main crew. The MACR essentially says that they left and nothing was ever heard from them again. It was a night mission and nobody saw them, or saw what happened to them.
The B-29 in Pueblo is painted to match "Peachy", but that's in honor of the main crew mostly, since the pilot was from Pueblo and it's named after his sister. Given the racy artwork on it, that's a bit creepy, but that's the story behind it. That main crew survived the war and had a second "Peachy". The B-29 in Pueblo is NOT the plane from WWII, but rather is a frankenstein of at least 3 carcasses from China Lake. The current crew chief is redoing the plane to have nothing but WWII markings and is pulling out all the badly done restoration work (there's a lot of badly done stuff in the plane). I've spent a fair amount of time in the plane myself, shooting interviews inside it.