Rob Kirkwood sent me some information and photos of a B-17 nose art panel that I was not aware of. The nose art panel is displayed at the Mohave Museum of History and Arts at Kingman, Arizona. This panel comes from B-17G 43-38450 that carried the name Lucky Partners with accompanying nose art depicting 1940s Disney characters Donald Duck and José “Zé” Carioca.

B-17G 43-38450 Lucky Partners

B-17G 43-38450 was built by Boeing at Seattle and delivered in April 1944. It was sent overseas and assigned to the 447th Bomb Group at Rattlesden in England (Square K). In that group, it was assigned to the 710th Bomb Squadron and initially carried the name Little Herbie, later becoming Lucky Partners. It survived the war and returned to the U.S. in July 1945, and was shuttled off to the RFC storage depot at Kingman for scrapping, along with thousands of similar B-17s and B-24s.

The Mohave Museum of History and Arts was able to get the nose art section. The story, as related on a display boards, states that before it scrapped and smelted, the nose art piece was cut out and eventually disappeared into a storage shed at the local Elks Lodge. There, it remained hidden until it was donated to the museum. None of the members of the lodge knew where it had come from and why it was hidden in the storage shed.

So, one more little bit of B-17 information for the records…and a chance to see some original nose art. The Mohave Museum of History and Arts website for the museum has information about arranging visits, and also has a photo archive that contains more B-17 photos from the time that Kingman was a gunnery training base during the war and its latter, more notorious, use a scrapping yard.

Thanks to Rob Kirkwood for sending me this information, which I’ve also added to my B-17 Locator Page as a nose art entry. By coincidence, Rob’s father was a navigator with the 447th Bomb Group and flew 30 missions with the group. The 447th Bomb Group Association also maintains a website.