In the course of doing some research on those B-17s transferred by the government to educational institutions in the early post-war years, I was made aware of an obscure civil B-17 that I have never looked at. As a result of correspondence with aviation historian extraordinaire Dan Hagedorn, he provided some information about a B-17F, 42-6036, that was transferred to the Civil Air Patrol in North Carolina circa 1946-1947. It turns out that this airplane later became N1542M and was exported to Bolivia for use as a cargo carrier in the early 1950s.
Short Version (No Coffee Needed)
The YC-108 was B-17F 42-6036 modified to a VIP transport. After service with the 8th Air Force, it was based in Washington D.C. and may have unusually gained the civil registration of N15585 while still a military aircraft, possibly for diplomatic purposes. It was deemed excess to AAF needs and sent for disposal in November 1946. It was transferred by the RFC to a Civil Air Patrol unit at Wadesboro, North Carolina, most likely in early 1947. By 1949, it was no longer needed and a CAP official ‘sold’ it to James W. Boy of Dunham, North Carolina. He ferried the aircraft from Wadesboro to Newark, New Jersey, receiving the civil registration of N1542M. It was going to be sold, or was sold, to the Charles Babb Company and was stored with a maintenance company at Newark. The maintenance company placed a lien on the aircraft for non-payment of storage fees, and it was auctioned in January 1951. The winning bid was the maintenance company, and they sold it to a Bolivian cargo operator in June 1951. It received the Bolivian civil registration of CB-88 and, later, CP-588. It crashed in Bolivia in 1963. The outer wing panels survived as spare parts and were brought back to the U.S. in the early 1990s and were last seen in a storage yard at Fort Collins, Colorado.
(Very) Long Version (Get Some Coffee)
The long story of this airplane is documented here as best as possible. I think several mysteries are solved by this account.
Dan Hagedorn’s information led to me doing some digging in areas I had not yet mined and, using information available from a public FAA database, (In the course of that research, I came up with three other civil B-17 registrations I had not yet heard about…more about two of those aircraft in other forthcoming postings. )
So, besides just relating just what turned out to be an interesting history of this B-17F, I thought it might also prove interesting to relate the process that was involved. As expected, the two stories bled together.
YC-108 42-6036
The first thing that jumped out is that the attributed serial for N1542M was Army 42-6036. This led to two immediate tasks: reviewing the AAF record card for 42-6036 and requesting the FAA registration file for N1542M. As anyone who has spent any time working with either of these sources, there are often errors on what are really primary research sources, so one does need to be careful to cross-check items to deduce the basic facts of an aircraft’s history. It was quickly determined that 42-6036 was actually the sole YC-108, one for four B-17s that were converted in 1943 to cargo duties as a test program. Two of the C-108s were converted to VIP transports (XC-108 41-2593 and YC-108 42-6036), one was converted to a cargo transport (XC-108A 41-2595), and one was converted to a fuel transport (XC-108B 42-30910). So, this was the sole YC-108. Reviewing the record card provided some good information and also some possibly misleading information.
Service History of YC-108 42-6036
The card reveals that B-17 42-6036 was built by Vega at Burbank and received by the AAF on June 28, 1943. It was flown to nearby Long Beach for modifications on June 30, 1943, then on to Amarillo, Texas on July 7, 1943, and finally to Dallas, Texas, on August 9, 1943. Things on the record card get a bit confusing at this point. It seems to document that 42-6036 was assigned, as a C-108, to “ELMS” on February 25, 1944, ELMS being the code for the 12th Air Force in North Africa. However, it was actually received by “SOXO,” the code for the 8th Air Force in England, on March 13, 1944.
What happened between August 1943 and February 1944 that made the B-17F into the YC-108? The record card does not provide much information. In my files I have a extract of an AAF report of activities of the Fairfield Air Service Command (FASC) between February 1943 and October 1944. That document states that all four C-108s were modified at the FASC located at Patterson Field at Fairfield, Ohio (that field later absorbed into the Wright-Patterson AFB complex). Other sources (without references) state the YC-108 was modified at the Douglas-Tulsa facility. I presume that most or all of the modifications done to 42-6036 to create the YC-108 were done at the FASC in the fall of 1943, that subsequent testing was done, and that a service test was implemented beginning in February 1944. (At that late date, it is doubtful that there was further consideration toward modifying any other B-17s to become C-108s; any later wartime cargo conversions either became CB-17s, RB-17s, or just B-17s that had some sort of mods to carry cargo or passengers.)
There is limited information about the YC-108, but what is available say that it was modified to become a VIP transport. Most, if not all, armor and armament was removed. As per what noted B-17 historian Peter Bowers documented for the similarly modified XC-108, “extra windows were installed and the interior was arranged with office space and living cooking facilities.”
Though out of order on the aircraft record card, it would seem that as of January 1944, the YC-108 was assigned to the 4100th Base Unit at Patterson Field, but possibly based at nearby Findlay Airport. As noted above, it departed the next month for an overseas assignment.
Several sources, including this one, suggests that YC-108 was assigned as the a personal transport for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. That reference shows the a YC-108 passing through Grenier Army Air Field in New Hampshire on February 23, 1944, a date that closely matches the record card showing its assignment overseas.
Another document that lends credence to the YC-108 being assigned to Eisenhower shows it, as a “special military aircraft,” assigned to transport a number of U.S. officers and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s driver, Kay Summersby, from England to Washington, D.C. on June 30, 1944, just weeks after the D-Day landings at Normandy.
The only known photo of 42-6036 is one aviation historian Rene Francillion provided Pete Bowers showing it at the Bengal Air Depot in India while, according to Francillon, it was assigned to Gen. Frank Hackett for use as a transport. As noted above, nothing on the aircraft record suggests assignment to anything except the 8th Air Force in the UK, and I have not been able to locate anything on the history of one Gen. Frank Hackett.
I am guessing that an AAF report was written on the service of the YC-108 in Europe but, if so, that report has not yet surfaced. It may be buried in the bowels of the Air Force Historical Research Agency if anyone cares to look.
The record card documents that 42-6036 was detached from the 8th Air Force on January 23, 1945 and returned to the U.S., assigned to an as-yet undetermined command. It departed the U.S. again on February 4, 1945, destination undetermined. It returned to the U.S. again on September 23, 1946, and assigned to the 503rd Base Unit at Gravelly Point, otherwise known as Washington National Airport in the nation’s capital.
YC-108 42-6036 with the 503rd Base Unit at Washington, D.C.
The 503rd Base Unit provided VIP transport for the Air Transport Command and was headquartered at Washington National Airport. The unit had numerous aircraft assigned to it, primarily C-54s, for both domestic and international travel, and supported presidential movements as well. 42-6036 was not attached to the unit for long…a bit more that two months…and there does not seem to be any mention of it in a unit history covering the period. The closest match shows a B-17 that carried Gen. Mark Clark from Austria to Washington, arriving on September 11, 1946. In any event, 42-6036 was released for disposal and transferred to the Reconstruction Finance Corp. (RFC) at Augusta, Georgia, on November 25, 1946.
However, as a confuser, there is a subsequent entry on the record card, almost certainly an error, that shows 42-6036 assigned to the Air Transport Command in Europe on April 30, 1947. The subsequent history of the YC-108 suggest it actually was trundled off to Augusta for disposal in November 1946, end of military story.
YC-108 42-6036 Assigned Civil Registration of N15585?
So, we now come to a little mystery that I think is solved by making a tiny jump. On February 9, 1945, the War Department requested that B-17 43-6036 be assigned a registration number and registration and airworthiness certificates “in facilitation of the war effort.” That same date, a registration certificate was issued to 43-6036 as N15585. A subsequent request was made on December 4, 1945, to cancel both that registration and that of C-47, 43-48736, N19931, and it was subsequently cancelled. It is obvious the B-17 serial on the February 9 request was in error, as 43-6036 was actually assigned to a P-51A. It is possible the serial was actually B-17G 44-6036, but that aircraft spent the first months of 1945 just assigned to a AAF training unit at Dyersburg, Tennessee, deemed excess in September 1945 and sent to the RFC at Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.
I think the most logical guess is that N15585 was actually assigned to YC-108 42-6036 for some diplomatic purpose on its overseas travel assignment that began on February 4, 1945. It is doubtful that this can ever absolutely be determined.
RFC Educational Transfer of 42-6036 to the Civil Air Patrol
To continue the story, it would seem that YC-108 went to the RFC at Augusta, Georgia, in November 1946. Sometime afterwards, probably in early 1947, it was transferred for educational purposes to the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) at Charlotte, North Carolina. Typical of such transfers, the CAP paid $350 for the aircraft to be transferred with the typical stipulations that it was “not for flight purposes” and a requirement that the aircraft be scrapped when no longer needed by the CAP. The airplane was evidently then delivered from Augusta to the Wadesboro Airport, located about forty miles east of Charlotte. The Wadesboro Airport was then a small airport located a few miles north of Wadesboro with a short, turf runway. Nowadays, it is the full-service Anson County/Jeff Cloud Field with a nice 5,500 foot paved runway serving the area as a regional airport.
There is a notation in the Wadesboro High School Alumni newsletter that “Ralph Greenwood bought a surplus B-17 Flying Fortress and brought it into the 1800 ft. Dirt and grass landing strip at the Wadesboro airport. This attracted a lot of people and ultimately it was sold to a South American country, I believe.”
Other references state that Ralph Greenwood was a World War II pilot and, at the time, manager of the Wadesboro Airport. Since he was the ferry pilot, it seems an assumption was made that he owned the airplane. A CAP unit was organized in late 1945 by another local World War II aviator, Risden Lyon, with meetings held in his Wadesboro basement. There is not any record yet of what educational purposes this local CAP unit put the aircraft toward, but it evidently remained parked at the Wadesboro Airport for at least the next year or so.
The Civil Air Patrol “Sells” the B-17
At some point, date undetermined but probably in 1949, the CAP decided to rid itself of the B-17. Risen Lyon, most likely one of the leaders of the local unit, sold the B-17 on behalf of the CAP. Things now get a bit more confusing from the available information.
The registration record card for N1542M maintained by the FAA documents that Mr. James Boy requested the issuance of the registration to 42-6036 with date undetermined, but most likely in 1949. James Boy put the aircraft into ferry condition and flew it from Wadesboro to Newark, New Jersey.
James Boy turns out to be an interesting individual. In the early post-war period, both he and his brother Carl come up several times in accounts of obtaining surplus aircraft from educational institutions and offering them for sale to civil operators. An available telling of the Boy family story notes that “in the forties, [James and Carl] bought and sold some military bombers used for hauling cargo, and eventually got into the air cargo freight business hauling meat out of La Paz, Bolivia, to the U.S.” Though the part about hauling meat to the U.S. is dubious at best, the Boy brothers apparently flew with or for the Bolivian meat haulers, which is of interest given the subsequent history of 42-6036. The brothers eventually formed National Jets at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a successful charter and FBO operation. James Boy passed away in 2016 so some details of his early exploits went with him.
The available records infer that Boy then sold, or intended to sell, the airplane to the Charles Babb Company. Babb was a well-known and long standing aircraft broker who dealt with numerous domestic and international aircraft sales from the 1930s through the 1960s. His company comes up numerous times in aircraft sales of surplus aircraft from U.S. to Latin American countries.
There must have been some, as yet undetermined, glitch in the transaction between James Boy and the Charles Babb Company as it seems it was never consummated. There is no obvious reason as the airplane was in a Newark hangar and all parties seemed interested. There were probably other things going on in the background, among which was the interest of the Mark Hurd Aerial Survey Company, based at Minneapolis, Minnesota, also interested in purchasing the airplane. Also, since the CAP did not hold title to 42-6036, there was no legal chain of custody that allowed Boy to officially sell the airplane to anyone, though there are numerous accounts of such transactions slipping through nonetheless.
Auction of 42-6036
In any event, the B-17/C-108 was evidently parked at the National Aircraft Maintenance Corp. facility at Newark. The saga of the airplane caught the attention of well-known national journalist and columnist Drew Pearson. He wrote about the B-17 in a February 7, 1950 “Merry-Go-Round” column distributed to the national media. In that column, he told the story of how the government transferred the B-17 to the CAP for $350 with the understanding it was to be scrapped when the CAP disposed of the airplane, but now it was in Newark being offered for sale and an airworthy airplane.
That February 1950 Pearson column reported that “this particular B-17 was last reported in the custody of the Babb Company at a Newark, N.J. airport. This company, which sells to foreign governments won’t say where the mysterious plane is now, even though it claims full ownership. Ownership is also claimed, however, by the Civil Air Patrol of Charlotte, N.C., which wants to give the plane back to the air force.” The plane’s location was, in February 1950, most likely in a National Aircraft Maintenance hangar.
Whether or not the national scrutiny scuttled the sale between Boy and Babb is unknown, but in March 1950, National Aircraft Maintenance placed a ‘hangarkeeper’s lien” on the airplane due to unpaid parking and storage fees. It proposed a sale by auction on Monday, April 17, 1950. That auction did not occur for an undetermined reason, and the airplane remained parked at Newark.
In January 1951, however, another sale was scheduled. Notice was presented by the Constable of Essex County, William Leeds, that a sale would occur on Tuesday, January 30, 1951, of N1542M based on parking and storage charges of $3,380 being claimed. Specific notice of the sale was made to the “only known parties interested as owners of said aircraft: (1) The Babb Co., Inc., New York City; (2) CAP Incorporated, Wadesboro, N.C.; (3) R.A. Lyon, Wadesboro, N.C.; (4) James Boy, Durham, N.C.”
The sale took place as scheduled on January 30, 1951, with National Aircraft Maintenance submitting the winning bid of $3,720.
With legal title to the airplane, sort of, the CAA issued a certificate of registration for N1542M in the name of the National Aircraft Maintenance Corporation, Hangar 8, Newark Airport, on February 6, 1951, a week after the auction.
National Aircraft Maintenance sold N1542M to the Bolivian company of Frigorifico Cooperativo Los Andes, address Box 848, La Paz, Bolivia, on June 18, 1951. Though an application was made by the Bolivian company to register N1542M with the CAA, instead, the registration was cancelled on June 21.
YC-108 42-6036 Goes to Bolivia as CB-88
Details about the Bolivian civil registry are hard to come by. Another aviation historian extrordinaire, John Davis. probably has the best primary information of anybody, as he had the opportunity to personally review the registry in Bolivia back in April 1967…yes, that 1967. John has since continued his research into Bolivian and other Latin American and, indeed, all civil registries and the secrets they hold.
As it happened, though, B-17 42-6036 does not appear on any of the know Bolivian-registered B-17s. A long standing mystery has surrounded, however, the identity of Bolivian B-17 CB-88 given, on most such normally-authoritative lists of such things, as B-17G 44-6332. Almost all listings you will find of civil B-17s make that association.
As per John Davis, the Bolivian records actually show the aircraft serial as 42-6332, but it turns out this Army serial was assigned to a Boeing-built B-29. The presumption was made that the correct serial number was actually 44-6332 and this has carried forth through the years.
However, a simple cross-check of that serial with its record card reveals that 44-6332 was lost in combat on September 10, 1944, at Vienna, Austria. Thus, an enduring mystery. However, with the knowledge that 42-6036 went to Bolivia, and the Vega serial number of 42-6036 is 6332, it is but a very short jump to suggest that when the B-17 was added to Bolivian civil register, the Vega serial number was transcribed into the military serial of 42-6332. Though not conclusive, all evidence points to this being the case.
In support of the above, John Davis recorded that CB-88 was assigned to the same company, Frigorifico Cooperativo Los Andes, in 1951, the same year that 42-6036 was documented in U.S. records as having been sold to that company.
So, we are going to now surmise that CB-88 was, in fact, 42-6036. It went on the civil register in 1951 and carried cargo, most likely freshly-butchered meat, in the challenging environment of Bolivia, for the following twelve years. It was reissued the civil registration of CP-588 in October 1954. After 1957, it is thought the B-17 was operated by another Bolivian cargo carrier, Aerovías Moxos and, by1959, Aerovías Tunari. Sadly, CP-588 crashed on May 1, 1963. Sketchy records suggest the accident may have occurred at the small Bolivian village of Blanca Flor, though no other details are known.
Very little other specific information or photos of CB-88 or CP-588 have surfaced over the years, with the exception of one interesting item. When Don Whittington went to Bolivia in 1990 to recover B-17E 41-9210 and fly it back to the U.S., he also shipped a small cache of Bolivian B-17 parts that he gathered. Among those parts were both outer wing panels from CP-588. Mark Morris captured a photo of them in storage at a yard at Fort Collins, Colorado, in 2016.
As can be seen in the photo, the right underwing still bears the faint U.S. insignia, while the left underwing has the partial “P-588” in red. Despite the nature of the ‘mix and match’ B-17 environment in Bolivia, these are quite possibly the surviving parts of YC-108 42-6036. The occasional attempts to determine the current status and location of these wing panels have proven fruitless. Nonetheless, they are no doubt still around and add a nice epilog to the story of an obscure and unusual B-17.