[John Dell]

I’ve been making progress on my revisions to B-17F “Tinker Toy”. Doing some more digging I’ve found other very useful photos and information.

At this point it would probably help if I gave a little background history of “Tinker Toy”.

“Tinker Toy” was one of three of the distinctive Lockheed Vega B-17Fs that were among the complement of B-17s initially assigned to the 381st Bomb Group in April 1943. Lockheed Vega B-17Fs differed from those built by Boeing or Douglas. They had the cheek gun nose window placement reversed as well as having the port side window elongated and slightly bulged out. I’ve also noticed from studying photos that these B-17Fs also had oversize national insignia as well as olive drab paint that tended to be on the lighter side. Another unique feature of some of these B-17Fs was a cartoon of a character named Strato Sam that was painted on the port side of the fuselage aft of the radio room. The link below tells the interesting story of the origin of these cartoons. The photo showing Micky Mouse as a gunfighter is actually a photo of the XB-40.

https://rcafno128squadron.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/b-17-and-ventura-art-of-randy-mccraw.pdf

“Tinker Toy” eventually came to be known as a jinx ship in the 381st. She had the grim distinction of bringing back the first dead crewman and seemed to be a magnet for battle damage. Interestingly though, she survived the brutal Schweinfurt/Regensburg mission without a scratch even though the 381st lost eleven B-17s. It was on the October 8th 1943 mission to Bremen, Germany that really cemented her bad reputation. A German fighter attacking the bomber hit it in the cockpit with 20mm cannon shells, decapitating the pilot and wounding the copilot. The cockpit was completely covered in blood and brain matter but the copilot, with the help of the Engineer/Top Turret Gunner flew the plane home, ground looping it on landing. The plane was such a bloody mess that the top turret gunner couldn't stand in his turret without slipping. After this deadly encounter the aircraft was eventually lost less than three months later on the December 20th, 1943 mission to Bremen, Germany. An attacking Bf 109 collided head-on with the plane, killing all but three of the crew. The 381st medical officer wrote that “Tinker Toy” was viewed with a mixture of horror and pride on the base. Also, there was not a single crew which, having flown a mission in “Tinker Toy”, did not have at least one member, and usually more, lost in another bomber in a subsequent mission.

I’ll try tomorrow to go into some more detail as to what I’ve determined about her markings and appearance as well as her movie career.

Thank you Cami for the nice complement. My attention to detail can at times border on the fanatical. Since I was a child, I have always been obsessed with B-17s. I think the photo below well illustrates my obsession. That stack contains every book I have on the B-17 and the units that exclusively used them.