“Ball of Fire”
Ball of Fire flew with the Circus from its first mission, the October 9, 1942 raid on Lille. Her gunners downed two enemy fighters, but return fire punctured a fuel line, wounded pilot Captain Joseph Tate and co-pilot Lieutenant Alfred Asch, and knocked out her hydraulics and electrical system. With fuel vapor filling the bomb bay, bombardier Lieutenant Orval Huff revived a gunner who had been plugging the leak with his bare hands, and the crew wrapped the line in tape and emery paper before Tate and Asch put the aircraft down on a grass airstrip near the White Cliffs of Dover — a Polish-manned RAF Spitfire station at East Church.
On November 22, 1942, Ball of Fire scored hits on the Lorient submarine pens and rail yards, then was attacked by three Ju-88s on the withdrawal. Gunner Sergeant John Sherman shot one down into the sea while pilot Lieutenant Howard Young was hit in the arm and co-pilot Lieutenant Cleveland Hickman in the leg. With Young's arm effectively lost below the elbow, bombardier Lieutenant Anthony "Kelly" Yenalavage took the controls, and he and the wounded Hickman flew the aircraft home together, landing at an RAF field in what was Hickman's first time at the controls of a B-24.
As flak damage accumulated, Ball of Fire was pulled from combat rotation and converted into a makeshift hospital ship, ferrying wounded men to Army hospitals faster than the roads allowed, her guns and turrets stripped for use in other aircraft.
Also known as "Barber Bob," she was later stripped further, painted with zebra stripes, and hung with strings of Christmas lights to serve as the 93rd Bomb Group's formation-assembly ship, flown at dawn by Captain Edwin Baker — who called her the "defanged striped-ass ape" — so that outbound crews could spot her, rally, and form up before heading out. The technique became standard Eighth Air Force practice, and the Circus loaned her to the 389th Bomb Group (the Scorpions) for the same purpose. Flying with the 329th Bomb Squadron (call letter O), she was replaced in the assembly-ship role by 42-72869 (Bear Down / U Name It Peg) and condemned for salvage on May 5, 1945.