43-38450

Little Herbie / Lucky Partners

Hanging in the Mohave Museum of History and Arts in Kingman, Arizona, is a section of the nose of a B-17G. Roughly cut from one of the 1,800 Fortresses stored at the reclamation center there before being unceremoniously chopped and melted down in 1947, the fragment disappeared into a storage shed of the local Elks Lodge. There it remained hidden for decades until donated to the museum. None of the members of the lodge knew exactly where it had come from, or why it was stashed in their shed.

Lucky Partners had been known to have been a part of the 447th, based on a few photographs taken at Rattlesden during the spring of 1945.  Yet the actual identify of the aircraft remained in question.  The nose panel now preserved in Kingman had been cut below the location of the factory-painted serial number, and the existing photos showed that the name "Lucky Partners" had been painted over the last three (and most significant) digits of that serial number.

Photo Courtesy of Rob Kirkwood

Lucky Partners, photographed at Rattlesden after 60 missions

B-17G-85-BO 43-38450 was rolled out of the Boeing plant in Seattle and delivered to the Air Force at Cheyenne on August 8, 1944.  By September 4, it was assigned to the 710th Squadron of the 447th, and began flying combat missions just eleven days later with the Hoffman crew.

It was originally named Little Herbie by the Hoffman crew, but did not bear any name or nose art until much later, when its name changed to Lucky Partners. 

Combat Missions:

 

70 missions, April 12-13, 1945