I added a post at aerovintage.com about an obscure civil B-17F that turns out to have a few interesting details:
It was the sole YC-108 (42-6036)
It appears it was assigned a civil registration of N15585 in February 1945 while still an Army aircraft for, possibly, diplomatic purposes.
It appears it was assigned to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower as a transport.
It went to the RFC for disposal in November 1946.
It was transferred to the Civil Air Patrol at Wadesboro, NC, for educational purposes, probably in early 1947.
An individual purchased it from the CAP (though the CAP did not own it) c. 1949, then ferried it to Newark, NJ as N1542M.
After some wrangling, it was sold via auction to a maintenance company that had a lien on it.
It was then sold to a Bolivian cargo company and became CB-88, later CP-588.
It crashed in 1963, but the outer wing panels were recovered in 1990 and remain in U.S. storage
.
The serial for
CB-88 has always been attributed to B-17G
44-6332. All evidence suggests that
CB-88 was actually
42-6036.
It's all laid out in the post for anyone who might be interested:
https://www.aerovintage.com/2023/07/11/an-early-obscure-civil-b-17-n1542m/