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One in three B-17s never made it home again after a mission. Daylight bombing allowed better accuracy for the bombardiers, but it made the Fortresses easier targets for fighter planes and ground gunners. Others were directed against locomotive works, railroads, shipyards, and factories in France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland. The first, on November 7, 1942, was a daylight bombing raid on submarine pens in Brest, France. From there, she embarked on 30 missions over Europe, aborting five because of mechanical problems. The Memphis Belle flew to England on September 25, 1942, and joined the 91st Bomb Group at the Bassingbourn Royal Air Force Base.
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Everybody by now surely knows that he dubbed his new plane the Memphis Belle after his sweetheart, Margaret Polk (though some experts say he initially planned to call it after his pet name for her, Little One, and instead got the name for the plane from the 1942 movie A Lady for a Night). The pilot was Lieutenant (later Colonel) Robert Morgan of Asheville, North Carolina. The plane bristled with machine guns, but the plane’s punch came from its four-ton payload of 500- or 1,000-pound bombs.Įach B-17 carried a crew of 10, and this particular plane picked up hers in Bangor, Maine. Air Force - fought over what, and where, the best home for this historic warplane should be.īut first they had to decide who owned it.ī-17 #42-24485 rolled off the Boeing Aircraft Company assembly lines in Seattle on Jone of some 12,750 Flying Fortresses built during the war. And over the next dozen years, various groups - the Memphis Belle Memorial Association, which had worked so hard to restore and maintain the plane the Memphis Park Commission, which operated Mud Island and officials with the U.S. The date was May 17, 1987, and the theme of this event was “The Memphis Belle: Home at Last.” Well, not quite.Īlthough the white vinyl canopy stretched over a dome of steel beams offered the best environment for the aging warplane in almost half a century, it still didn’t fully protect it from the elements. The flyover was a salute to the most famous B-17 of them all - arguably the most famous airplane of World War II - the Memphis Belle, which had moved into a new pavilion on Mud Island. As they approached Mud Island, one plane’s bomb-bay doors opened, dropping thousands of rose petals onto the crowds below. On a Sunday afternoon 26 years ago, seven B-17 bombers - the largest formation of Flying Fortresses since World War II - rumbled low over the Mississippi River.