Mystery Flying Fortress - Blood Red Skies

Sometimes you just have to remember that people screw up!

I have decided to do a B17 squadron for Blood Red Skies. This is a bit of madness bit I think several Flying Fortresses will look rather good as a demo game or a big club game.  At the moment there is no "official" model from Warlord Games, and tbh I don't think there will be for some time. Fortunately there is a plastic B17 kit out there by Academy in the correct 1:200 scale. It is out of production, so not easy to find, but still relatively cheap if you can find them. So far I have 5, but that nice Steve Perry of Dark Ops fame has loaned me 3 he managed to grab on the understanding I paint them for him, which seems fair enough. Ultimately I think nine is the target but they appear only now and then on ebay so it may take a while.

This is what the box looks like

Its an old kit - actually there is a good blog post about that but I will leave it til later, because the interesting thing is, when I have looked around, the unit depicted doesn't seem to exist!

The big A is the 91st Bomb Group, but none of the Bomb Squadrons in the 91st used the ID code LC. The 322nd used LG, the 323rd used OR and the 324th (of Memphis Belle fame) used DF. No LC. I would love to claim I researched that, but actually it was Kevin at MiscMinis who I asked to look into doing some individual BG markings. Kevin is pretty much a "go to" guy and his decals are first class.

So I was searching around the web looking for a Squadron that used LC when I saw this pic titled

"Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortresses" of the 91st Bomb Group, 8th Air Force, enroute toward Cognac, France, fly at 18,000 feet altitude - high above the heavy cloud banks. 31 Dec.43."

Looks a bit familiar? On closer inspection this is has the same tail serial as the Academy kit 23057 N with the ID code LGN, so is from the 322nd BG- I suspect the Academy guys took this exact pic as their reference, but missread the ID code as LCN - mystery solved!

Steve is less "anal" than me about this sort of stuff so he doesnt mind having his three bombers in the same scheme and serials - which will make the job easier. As for me, I've asked Kevin at MiscMinis to do me some custom decals to allow me to field planes from the 324th, though I suppose I should steer away from DF-A for fear of cheese.

Cheers

EDIT - Google is your friend apparently - B17 F serial 23057 LGN was named "Blonde Bomber". Nice to know