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Crew
44's 2nd Aircraft
"City of Attleboro"
"Slim II"
B-29 # 44-87642
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Standing
L to R:
1st Lt Edward
Dengler, Pilot; 1st Lt Charles
A. Smith, Radar Observer; Capt Carroll
H. Payne, AC; 1s Lt Thomas
Brennan, Jr., Navigator; 1st Lt Julian
Arnold, Bombardier |
Kneeling
L to R:
S/Sgt Lewis
E. Howard**, TG; Sgt Jerrell
L. Taylor, RG; Sgt Lloyd
B. Volkmar, Radio Operator; S/Sgt Clarence
H. Martin, Jr. LG; T/Sgt. Max
L. Sampsel, CFC Gunner; M/Sgt Lloyd
E. Geringer, FE
** Replaced Henry
Matthaus, killed on Crew 44's 11th mission. |
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Slim
II - B29 # 44-87642 getting 2 cylinders were being replaced
on # 3 engine
Capt Payne in the foreground looking on.
July 1945
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Naming
of Aircraft
Crew
44 viewed the movie "To Have and Have Not, " based on
a story by Ernest Hemmingway, the movie starred Lauren
Bacall in her first film opposite Humphrey Bogart.
They
voted unanimously to name their plane "Slim," the role
she portrayed in the movie. After "Slim" returned from
the last incendiary raid on Tokyo with 350-400 flak
holes, it never seemed to fly straight and true. They
were given a new plane, which the crew dubbed "Slim
II."
Bacall
learned that a B-29 crew had named their plane after
her, and sometime after the war met with Lloyd Volkmar.
She for the first time, viewed photos of the plane,
crew members and some of the wartime targets that "Slim
II" had bombed in her name.
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Lloyd B. Volkmar and Lauren Bacall, viewing pictures of
B-29s and Crew 44. Dressing room, Hannah Theater Cleveland,
Ohio. Miss Bacall had the leading role in "Good Bye-Charlie"
November 9, 1959. |
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As
an interesting sidelight:
"Slim" B-29 SN 42-93979 really became "Slim I 1/2".
You may have read about our eleventh mission on May
25-26. We were badly shot up over Tokyo, and our tail
gunner was killed. Although there was some damage in
other parts of the aircraft, the aft twenty or thirty
feet had innumerable holes. An anti-aircraft shell,
probably 75 mm, had detonated near the left side of
the rear-facing gunner. Fifty caliber ammunition for
the tail guns was belted and racked on the port side
of the passage forward of the gunners position. Some
of that ammunition cooked off after the AA shell exploded.
"Slim"
could not be repaired. There was at Harmon Field, however,
a recce B-29 that had a front end that was badly damaged.
I don't recall whether it was combat damage or crash or
both. In any event, it would never fly again, but had
a perfectly good tail section. "Slim" was chopped
off behind the radar room, and the recce tail section
was attached. We flew it a few more times, and Payne believed
it had picked up a few miles per hour. Some time in July
a replacement crew arrived in their shiny new B-29. We
took that plane and named it "Slim II" and "City
of Attleboro". The new arrivals got "Slim I
1/2".
Source: Charles A. Smith, Radar Specialist,
P-44 |
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