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Hi Drgondog: That is a great picture! From the looks of it, it is one of the fighters from the 355th FG, and the bar below the B to me would tell me that there was another plane in the squadron already there with a B, so this differentiated the two. The WR would denote the 354th Fighter Squadron. Teh partial removal of the D-Day invasion stripes would place the picture taken in the fall of 1944, would be my guess.
The pic was taken about the time my father led the last Shuttle Mission on September 18, 1944 - 22, 1944. Interesting fact. My father's previous B was badly damaged by flak on the 15th August, he got this B as a replacement and his 'old' B returned as B. The tanks are impregnated paper - I don't believe the 355th ever received steel or metal tanks. Bill G is right about the 'order' but SOP is don't even remotely think about risking the airplane to return with the tank.
The 2SF, and indeed the Scout Force Experimental both were formed as E Flight for the 354th, 357th and 358th - the only difference in squadron codes is one (Exp) had bar below the WR,OS, YF and the other (2SF) has the bar above.
You'll note a couple of interesting things about Bill's plane that I included on the model. One is that there is a bar above the WR, denoting it to be a 2nd Air Division Scouting airplane attached to the 354th Fighter Squadron, versus a regular fighter plane from that squadron. Also, the cowl is painted an unusual bright green, which I verified through records and Bill himself, that planes in just this one squadron were painted up with the bright green cowls.
The drop tanks on the plane in your photo appear to me to be steel, versus the silver painted paper tanks that were manufactured in England. Bill routinely flew with the paper 110 gal. drop tanks that were required to make the deep penetrations into Germany with the bomber stream. Bill told me that if they did not encounter enemy fighters, (and they were not supposed to take them on unless attacked, themselves) they flew back to base with the tanks on as there was a shortage of them at the time.
Thanks for the picture, it is great!
davegee
Regarding Henry Brown: Unknown to Bill, Brown had been shot down and made POW before Bill arrived with the Scouts. Brown had used the same squadron code letters WR-Z that Bill's plane used, and Bill often wondered if German pilots might have purposely avoided him, thinking that super-ace Brown was flying that airplane! Bill later exchanged some letters with Brown after the war, and Brown sent him a card saying " from one WR-Z driver, to another."
davegee