FB382, 42-103532, P-51C-10-NT- (NA-103).
On 22nd June Mustang FZ147 PK*J of W/O Tamowicz was damaged by flak and he made a forced landing. US engineers were constructing an advanced landing strip in swampy ground below the crippled aircraft. Seeing Tamowicz crawl from the wreckage onto a dry islet Horbaczewski made a perfect landing on the unfinished strip. Commandeering a jeep he went to fetch the downed pilot. First asking Tamowicz to take off his wet and muddy clothing he crammed him into the cockpit and sitting on his lap he took off successfully and arrived safely back at Coolham. All this earned a single line entry in 133 Wing's records. "S/Ldr Horbaczewski brought back Sgt Tamowicz, naked and rather worn, but still useable."
18 Sector's combat diary recorded: "one pilot returned in working condition, though stark-naked."
A number of photographs of the Mustang Horbaczewski was using were taken soon after at Coolham. These include a sequence of Horbaczewski with his crew chief signing the form 700 and boarding his aircraft. Others show the aircraft tooled up and ready to go.
For a long time it was believed that the Mustang was FB166 until a few years ago examination of film footage of the aircraft revealed its true identity as FB382.
Note the chessboard has a different orientation to that of FB166. In 1944 seems all of 315 Squadron's Mustangs had these 'negative' chessboards apart from FB166 and FB353 which was a transfer from 316 Squadron. This was not so with the other Polish Mustang squadrons. The white overspray on the propeller blades is typical for Mustangs as the spinners were not removed when they were painted white. The white paint has peeled off the spinner in places. It was usual for the aircraft's individual letter to be painted in black underneath the nose, sometimes on the white nose band, sometimes behind it. Also note that the Malcolm had no metal framing and is completely clear. It was designed to split in two if it hit the tail when ejected. The frame either had a frosted appearance of was not polished. Very rarely was it ever painted.
The invasion stripes are typical for those applied to the whole wing, very messy. On the upper surface of the wings they impinged slightly on roundels. On some Mustangs the roundels were painted further back than on others. This left little room to fit in the aircraft's individual letter, especially broad letters such as G or H. On all three of Horbaczewski's PK*Gs the letter G overlapped the roundel slightly. When it came to painting the invasion stripes the Sky band was painted over in white so that the whole set of bands were further back than is normal. Again this is found throughout the wing. Perhaps this was done so that the individual letter had a dark background instead of white and so could be seen more easily. Also typical for the wing the letter the black stripe was painted around the letter and no attempt was made to fill in the centre with black. The serial number is painted forward of the tailplane whereas on FB166 and FB387 it was painted under the tailplane.
There were 12 aerial victory and 20 ground attack mission markings. The squadron badge partly obscures the original data panel applied at NAA. It appears that this was masked when the aircraft was repainted with RAF Dark Green leaving a patch of the original ANA 613 Green.