“Little Lady”

Little Lady belonged to navigator Kenneth Hebert, who kept a monkey named ETA aboard as the crew's mascot. On the low-level Ploesti mission of August 1, 1943, it flew with pilot Richard Wilkinson and command pilot Captain Edwin Baker aboard as an extra pilot, tucked wingtip-to-wingtip with element leader Kayo Dessert's Tupelo Lass. On the run in, its gunners shot up flak positions and a machine-gun tower, but the aircraft took a hit in the Number Three engine and another in the belly, spilling gas from the ruptured tanks. Bombardier Joel Silverman got the bombs away and closed the doors as fumes filled the cabin, and Baker and Wilkinson feathered the burning engine before breaking into clear sky.

On the withdrawal, with fuel running low and control and electrical systems failing, Baker threaded a narrowing valley in the Bulgarian mountains below a German flak battery that could not traverse its guns fast enough to track them, then picked a fork in the valley by instinct before open country appeared ahead. Crossing into Turkey under fire from another gun position, the crew spotted the Corlin airfield and Baker hand-pumped the gear and flaps down while Wilkinson fought the controls; the aircraft came in too fast, bounced hard, and the fuselage broke apart on the runway before rolling to a stop in a field. No one aboard was hurt, but Little Lady never flew again. The crew, carrying mostly veterans of the Wham Bam, was interned by Turkish authorities, first at an army cadet school in Ankara and later at a hotel in Adana.