[John Dell]

Yeah, “pretty well documented” is a good way of putting it. The stack would probably grow another foot or so if I included all the books I have on the 8th Air Force. Flying Fortress by Edward Jablonski was my first B-17 book. I received it as a Christmas gift in 1976 so that stack of books has been forty years in the making. Two of the books were published in 1943 and several just came out in the last few years. I frequently check online to see if anything new comes out. A good source for used and out of print books are these two websites…

http://www.abebooks.com/?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_AbeBooks_Brand-_-Top+Brand-_-abebooks&gclid=CLK2ssnT0rcCFZBj7Aody1IAeA

http://www.alibris.com/?utm_source=criteo&utm_medium=retarget&utm_term=na &utm_campaign=lowerfunnel

I’ve found quite a few gems at decent prices on these sites. One can never have too many books.

Back to “Tinker Toy”. Photographically, “Tinker Toy” was fairly well documented. I’ve found about a dozen pictures of her taken at various times in her career. Unfortunately, all but one were taken from the front. The photo in Claims to Fame is the only one I’ve found that shows the tail. None have surfaced that show the entire aircraft. Below is probably the best known photo of “Tinker Toy”. This was taken right after the grisly October 8th 1943 mission to Bremen. The men are pointing to the entry holes made by the 20mm cannon shells that killed the pilot. You can also see the distinctive Lockheed Vega nose window arrangement. My model represents (to the best of my ability) “Tinker Toy” as she appeared during this mission.



So what I do in a case like this is to look for photos of other B-17s in the same unit. This way I can make an educated guess as to how the various unit markings would have been applied. The 8th Air Force adopted the system of using two letter squadron codes from the RAF. The 381st was the only unit to change their codes early on in their deployment. “Tinker Toy” belonged to the 535th Bomb Squadron whose squadron code initially was “PL”. This was soon changed to “MS”. So when “Tinker Toy” arrived in England in May of 1943, she received the squadron code “PL” and the individual aircraft letter “X” on the rear fuselage in gray paint. The “X” was painted forward of the national insignia, the “PL” aft of the waist gun windows. The national insignia at this point was an insignia blue disk with a white star. These markings didn’t last long. Along with the change to the squadron codes, the national insignia was modified. One either side of the blue disk were added white rectangles and the entire insignia was surrounded in red. Below is the latest version of my kits fuselage showing the painted old painted out codes with the new ones applied.



Studying photos of other 381st B-17s, it seems it was most common to simply paint out the old codes and apply the changes to the national insignia and the new codes, in white, over top. The individual aircraft letter was then only carried on the vertical stabilizer. Also around this time the white triangle with the insignia blue “L” was also applied. Photos I’ve seen also show that the markings within the 381st were applied in varying degrees of quality. Some of them were down right sloppy. I figured since “Tinker Toy” had a tendency to attract battle damage, this down time would of allowed for the new markings to be applied with some care.

When I started the kit I did have photos of both sides of the nose but taken at different times. The port side had the name as well as the mission markers and fighter claims painted on. The photo I had of the starboard side showed just the name. I have since discovered a later photo of the starboard side showing it too had the mission markers and fighter claims. So I updated my kit art.

More tomorrow, thanks for your time.