Her smile reflects her confidence in choosing a fine MOPAR product, and when the top goes down, the gloves come off!
Well, since this is now open to general Pre-65 pictures...... My Dad's cousin was a B-24 pilot with the 8th Air Force, 44th heavy Bomb Group, 506th Squadron and this is he and his crew with his 1st plane "Wicked Witch". A few weeks after this picture was taken he came down with the flu and was grounded by the flight surgeon. Another pilot took the plane on a raid against the German sub pens at Kiel and it was shot down. It was hit by flak on the way to the target and the Luftwaffe picked it off on it's way home over Belgium. All the officers survived and were captured by the Germans but none of the enlisted men survived. To the day he died he insisted he could have brought it home but I read a copy of the mission report and from the report given by other pilots the Witch was doomed. He was assigned another plane called "Old Crow" which he piloted on Operation Tidal Wave, the infamous Ploesti oil field raid, and 20 some other missions before it got shot up so badly they finally had to scrap it. By the end of the war he had been promoted to Lt. Col. and was the squadron commander. On their last combat mission of the war he took the belly gunner's place on one of the planes. He wanted a chance to finally shoot back at the Germans but by then the Luftwaffe was done for and he never got his chance. He flew 33 combat missions, most of them in "Old Crow". I got all this from their official unit history, he'd rarely talk about it. He's the first Officer kneeling on the left. A very bad photo of "Old Crow" on the approach to Ploesti taken from the last plane of the group ahead of him. Old Crow nose art..... On the flight from America they stopped in the Carribean, the Officer's Club there had been ordered to get rid of all the hard liquor so they were selling it for pennies on the dollar. The crew pooled their money and bought all the Old Crow whiskey they could which they sold when they got to England for a "small" profit. They needed a name for their plane and "Old Crow" seemed the obvious choice.
The Jalopy Journal
