Aero Vintage Books

Doing some digging on eBay and found this gem:


Close-up and enhanced a bit:


42-102868, one of the twenty in the 102800 series that didn't go through Cheyenne for the cheek gun conversion. Per Fortlog:

Dave Osborne wrote:42-102868 Del Ft Myers 13/4/44; Bismark 5/5/44; 2118 BU Buckingham 11/5/44; 2126 BU Laredo 1/2/45; RFC Walnut Ridge 27/11/45.

I think this may have been taken at Laredo from the three-digit number "332" on the nose (like the Laredo accident photo of 42-102877 #230 I posted on another thread).

David, do you have any corrections here? Photos of Laredo trainers seem to be pretty rare. Would it have had the number repeated on the fin below the serial?

Osborn is pretty close on this description - just minor clean-up.

No accident recorded for 868, so right now, this is the first photo of her appearing.

Laredo used a three digit code (while Buckingham AAF used 2 digits) so agree this is a Laredo ship.

I'll go back through the accident reports I have, see is any other Laredo ships where photographed and see what they were marked.