Aero Vintage Books

Not much here really, but the tail of Pyote trainer 42-31964 showed up in the background of this crew photo.

Odd buzz number there - 9 looks like the bottom half of a 5, and the 4 looks squeezed. Were these usually done with big stencils, or scaled up from a guidebook and masked off by hand?

Chris,

Trainer markings varied quite a bit, from "by the book" block numerals to basically hand-painted ones like you see here. The Forts assigned to the training facilities quite often were moved around quite a bit so new markings were adapted or painted over the old.

Steve, do you happen to have a date for this photo? An interesting shot of a Marauder for a crew backdrop, I'm assuming this was in '44 when B-29 training was getting fully under way. Pyote used B-26s as a substitute for the B-29s along with the B-17s in that timeframe.

42-31964 was assigned to Pyote between 30 March 1944 and 28 July 1945


Since she has the PY markings, this photo after 30 March 1944

Second Air Force wrote: Steve, do you happen to have a date for this photo? An interesting shot of a Marauder for a crew backdrop, I'm assuming this was in '44 when B-29 training was getting fully under way. Pyote used B-26s as a substitute for the B-29s along with the B-17s in that timeframe.

I believe that's 42-95676 from a tow target squadron.

Yes, that makes sense, Steve.

We've got a pair of main gear wheels and tires from an AT-23 that was written off at McCook toward the end of the war. I sort of assumed that this one was being used for circuit work at Pyote and almost entirely forgot about the tow-target unit. One of our old friends from 9th Bomb Group related to me years ago how he spent most of his time in 2nd and 3rd Phase training flying Forts and Marauders. I think he got eight or nine hours as PIC of an actual B-29 before shipping out for the combat zone. His completed training record had a lot of blank blocks in it when the call came to head overseas.