“Lil Lady”

Lil Lady flew the Ploesti mission of August 1, 1943 under command pilot Captain Edwin Baker, a Circus flight leader, with Dick Wilkinson in the left-hand seat and navigator Ken Hebert - who was known around Hardwick for keeping a pet monkey - working the charts behind them. Engineer Charles Kimtantis later recalled the astonishment of looking down on Romanian farmland below the low-flying formation: peasants waving handkerchiefs, horses bolting in the fields, villagers in their Sunday best staring up in wonder. When the lead formation turned early at Targoviste onto a course that would carry the force toward Bucharest rather than the target, Hebert was among the voices protesting over the intercom, demanding of his pilot, "Where the hell are you going?" Baker held with the formation regardless, telling his crew simply, "We can't help that. We're sticking with the leader."