WWII Planes: What a Beauty

American Beauty airplane

First of my WWII airplanes to look up is American Beauty, and her toplessness. There’s no serial number on this plane visible in the picture, so all I had to go on was the artwork. I was quite surprised when this turned up a lot of information. First, I found this plane on a few people’s Pinterest boards. I know nothing about this plane – or military aviation history, really, other than the very significant planes – so it’s wild to think that my grandfather saw the same plane that other people have seen and posted/published pictures of. It’s one of those moments of “Wow, my family witnessed history, stuff other people cared about, too!” 

Another search result gave me a serial number: 42-73045. The page had a brief, but extremely fruitful, history of the plane and a couple more pictures. Woo! Making progress! 

This page tells me that the American Beauty was converted to a photoreconnaissance F-7A and flew in New Guinea and the Netherlands East Indies in 1944, then was scrapped at Nadzab Airfield in New Guinea. From my grandfather’s service records, I know he was in the South Pacific for part of 1944, and the condition of the plane looks pretty awful – implying it might be scrapped soon – so things are matching up. I wonder if my grandfather saw this plane as it was in the process of being scrapped. I don’t have anything that says he was stationed at this specific airfield, though, so I don’t know if he was there and saw it on a daily basis, or if he was just passing through. 

(These two sites explain how a B-24’s bomb areas (bomb bays, bomb doors, sights) were reconfigured for cameras and camera sights in an F-7A, if you're curious.) 

So to the googlemachine I went with this serial number the Pacific Wrecks site gave me. Most of the hits had similar information, if not the exact information, but one document I found in a couple of places that I loved had a picture of the 7/18/44 20th Mapping Squadron, 6th Photo Group crew and a typed/scanned list of all of their names. Could you imagine finding that if your father or grandfather was one of those people listed? I know my grandfather wasn’t part of a Mapping Squadron, but I still held my breath as I read the names, just in case. 

Finally, I searched the Library of Congress and National Archives websites using the plane’s serial number, name, and/or a few other bits I found while looking at all of these other records. LoC didn’t give me anything; the Archives gave me no results using the specific information, and I didn’t feel like going through the 41,000+ results for “B-24” and 1,827 results for F-7A in the 1940s (although the ones I looked at were amazing. They are so clear and the captions are so detailed.). Yikes! 

One thing I was confused about were the markings under the window. (For one, they look like flower pots to me.) As far as I know, marks like that usually represent bombing missions, but if this plane was only used for photoreconnaissance, there wouldn’t have been bombing missions. Two grainy images I found online also have these decals (one only has one row of decals, but the other has the exact set of decals my photo does; other clues tell me that if my grandfather’s picture was of the plane on its way to being scrapped, this other photo looks like it’s even further along in the process). For a moment, I thought maybe it represented how many missions the plane had gone on (but why do some have stars and others don’t?), but there are 12 of these flower pots, and websites I found say it went on 19 missions… yet others say it was shot down on its 12th mission. Hmmm… 

So to solve the first: The Mystery of the Mysterious Flower Pots. Two websites about the 20th Mapping Squadron briefly noted these markings! According to Bill Cahill and Chuck Varney, these are mission markers, but they’re not flower pots, they’re K-17 aerial cameras (Really? Okay… maybe.). A star above a camera [flower pot] represents a successful mission (whereas clouds would mean failure due to weather, an X would mean mechanical failure, and “C.F.” would mean crew failure), and flower pots – I mean, cameras – without a star meant a non-successful mission (perhaps due to weather, mechanical, or crew issues, but not wanting to draw attention to the non-success). 

Mystery #2: The Mystery of the Missing 7 Flower Pots. This one, I don’t know. The main discrepancy is whether the plane went on 19 missions or was shot down on mission #12. Could it have been shot down and damaged, seen by my grandfather and the other photographer, reconstructed, and gone on 7 more missions? And/But if it did, why wouldn’t those extra seven missions be denoted by flower pots, too (unless, again, my grandfather and that other photographer saw it between missions 12 and 13… but that seems unlikely)? 

A final note on American Beauty: a few of the sites I found say the artist is Al G. Merkling. Merkling was a Corporal in the 20th Mapping Squadron and did most of the squadron’s nose art. 

I’m sure there’s a ton more information that I could try to find, but I’m happy with what I have on this one now: it was built in 1942 as a B-24J Liberator, but was converted in 1943 to a photoreconnaissance F-7A; serial number 42-73045; artist Cpl. Al Merkling; it flew (19 or 12) missions around New Guinea in 1944; and was scrapped in New Guinea at Nadzab Airfield in 1944, around the same time my grandfather was stationed – as military records like to say – “somewhere in the South Pacific.” If I want to go further in-depth, I also now know what changes were made to a B-24J to make it into an F-7A for cameras, and I have names and pictures of some of the men who flew the 42-73045 and other planes in the 20th Mapping Squadron. What I still don’t know is whether my grandfather took this photo, where he saw this plane, and when the photo was taken. (Label your photos, people!) Those questions will never be answered, but a lot of my questions about the plane itself have been. 

pt2: WWII Planes: You Are My Sunshine