P-51B at Debden ... (pic)

[Chicoartist]

Here's one from the files ... Enjoy!

Wade

Last edited by Chicoartist on Sat Dec 17, 2005 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Cadillac_of_the_Sky]

Wade,
Very cool pic! More, more, more!!! ...please!?!?

COTS

[Chicoartist]

I'd love to know the story here ...

[henning]

well ironically the P47 was the mount of

Capt. walter hollander, 334th fs, 4th FG
qp-B, p47 , 41-6538

this according to the "immortal" Don Allen, who did the
artwork on the front of it. Don was a crew chief in the
4th and did lots of absolutely beautiful stuff that I'm
sure most everyone has seen thats familiar with the
likes of the 4th FG and p-51's & P-47's.

Saw don this past september at the 4th FG reunion.
He's doing pretty well in general. Great guy. He
passed out a booklet of some of his nose art and its
just incredible. He was a commercial artist before
the war.

In this particular picture it looks like they are inspecting some
battle damage or something? Hard to say.

Anyway, thanks so much for posting this wade, these are great.
I've heard great things about you from keith.

henning

[Chicoartist]

well ironically the P47 was the mount of

Capt. walter hollander, 334th fs, 4th FG
qp-B, p47 , 41-6538

this according to the "immortal" Don Allen, who did the
artwork on the front of it.

Yes, Keith H. is a super troop. I've known him for about 5 years now. We just finalized discussions for a large panoramic view painting of Debden with Don Gentile buzzing over after a mission. Keith had a great idea of showing Col. Don taxiing underneath shaking his fist at Gentile.

You can almost hear Gentile saying "DOHP!"

When I first posted the P-47 pic above, I meant that I was curious as to the "story" of what the men were looking at and talking about. I figured that looking up the nose art/pilot would be easy enough ... or so I thought!

I've spent some time with Don Allen, and his scrapbooks of original sketches for the various nose arts is unbelievable. I'm sure Don's reference to P-47C "QP-B" is correct for when he first painted the removeable side engine panel most 4th FG P-47 art was applied to, but I think that THIS picture may be a different (later) aircraft.

First, the cowling is an early "D" model cowling, based on the squared off cowl flaps going all the way down past the 'shorter' C-model arrangement. It was very common for the 'art panel' to be swapped to a 'new' aircraft for a variety of reasons. When the new D-1s came on board, some of the vets swapped their art panel to their new D-model. The same thing happened when the first few updated D-5s arrived in May or so.

Also, in the 4th FG it was common practice for the individual code letter to be the "property" of the crew chief, not the pilot. As aircraft were handed down so that a pilot could have a "newer" model, the new plane got the same code letter (assuming the pilot kept his same crew chief), and the 'new' crew chief of the older plane then painted HIS code letter on the plane. In good high-rez pictures you can see evidence of many "repaints" of code letters. This is definitely Hollander's personal artwork; he was from Hawaii, and this is a Hawaiian saying. What's unclear is why he's listed as flying a "B" most everywhere, and this is definitely not a "B" code.

There's always the slight chance that the art panel was swapped to THIS plane from his regular "B" coded plane while "B" was in the shop with an engine change (typically done after only 80 hours under combat conditions!). It happened many times - and again with Mustangs, the "form" fitting tendencies of the cowling panels to specific P-51 aircraft nothwithstanding. However, the 'swaps' were the art panels only, not the entire cowling.

Here's a 100% crop of the raw scan ... the code letter under the crewman's chin is an "A".



Wade

[systemofadown1162]

I courious as to why the barrels of the guns would be staggered on some planes, as on the P-47 in this photo, and not on other planes.

[Rob Mears]

Wing mounted machineguns were staggered to accommodate the ammo feed trays for each gun. Had all of the guns been equidistant, the you'd have had to route the trays on top of each other, which would have meant having a huge bulbous fairing on top of the wing. Routing them this way meant the plane designers could maintain a thin, low-drag wing profile.

[Connery]

Also, if you look at a P-47 from the front, you will see that the gun barrels are parallel with the ground. I would think that would make it much easier to align the convergent point for all all guns.

[mike furline]

Don't know what all the people around the P-47 are looking at, but I don't think it was battle damage. Notice the a/c guns still have tape over them. No apple pie eatin, baseball playin American would accept battle damage without lettin loose on those .50's.

Regards,