Help Identify this B-17 Crew

A while back, the Archive acquired this WWII B-17 crew photo, which came with no other information other than the official caption (which, other than the date of September 30, 1943, I'm not sure how to decifer) and the handwritten name "Elliott Hofkin". So, I'm turning to my readership for any help in identifying all these crew members, as well as which B-17 they're standing in front of.

With the modern power of Google,  the name was sufficient enough of a clue to lead me to the several sources.

One was a forum post at Army Air Forces (link here) that discusses a photo (without showing it) of the Hofkin crew, and lists their names, but I'm not certain that these names also correspond to our photo. For the record the names as listed in the forum post of Hofkin's crew are:

Hofkin, Elliott F. 2nd Lt. Pilot 
Cronin, William R. 2nd Lt. Copilot
King, Leslie M. 2nd Lt. Navigator
Maurstad, Richard I. 2nd Lt. Bombardier
McDonald, Paul R. S/Sgt. AEG
Hagen, Wesley M. S/Sgt. ROG
Thompson, Eldon W. S/Sgt. AAEG
Sarver, Edward K. Sgt. AG
Riedinger, Lawerance D. Sgt. AROG
Guttadauro, Joseph A. Sgt. AAEG 

I was also able to learn that this photo was taken just after the crew arrived in England. According to the forum post, Lofkin's crew completed their 25th mission and their tour of duty in April, 1944.

Another source was the AAIR website which lists Hofkin as the pilot of B-17G 44-6641 (817th BS, 483rd BG, 15th AF) when it suffered a taxiing accident (the code lists it as due to mechanical failure) on October 6, 1945 at Lagens AAFB on the Azores.

According to other records I was able to find, Hofkin was born on March 2, 1922 and passed away at the age of 83 on September 5, 2005, and appears to have last resided in Hatfield, PA.

If you have any information that will help in ID'ing these crewmembers, please comment below!

(Tip o' the hat to Chip for his help!)

Lackland's Guardians

B-17G 44-83512 was initially put on display in 1956. Note post-1947 wing markings

Lackland Air Force Base, just to the west of San Antonio, Texas, is known as the "Gateway to the Air Force", since it serves as a training base that just about all new USAF personnel have to transit through. Lackland has, for years, cultivated a large collection of display aircraft which have been located at different places around the base, and most of which today line the perimeter of the base's parade grounds (see the overhead photo at the bottom of this post). It's thus no real surprise that when one of the new arrivals wanted to send a photo back home to his parents or buddies, the old planes were a natural backdrop, and a few of these photos have found there way into our Archive.

This photo is unmarked and unrelated to the three below (which are dated June
1951). Since the grounds have not been prepared, it would be my guess that this
photo was taken earlier than the others.

Three of the Lackland aircraft are featured this week, the B-17G above, a Republic P-47N Thunderbolt and a very rare North American P-82E Twin Mustang.

B-17G 44-83512 was initially put on display in 1956, and for a time, it was painted to represent the B-17 Princess Pat, (at least one source says that it was also displayed as Sentimental Journey for a time) but has since been repainted as Heaven's Above (I've tried to determine if this actually was Heaven's Above, or only wears the colors...results of my research are inconclusive...and I welcome reader's input!). A 1959 color shot of it can be seen here (note the lack of the upper turret). A fairly current view can be seen here.

Though it isn't entirely clear when P-47N 44-89348 was put on display, The photo on the left indicates that it has been at least 61 years as of next week. what is known is that it is still there, exactly 61 years (as of tomorrow) later, although not looking at all like it did in 1951 (it's painted in the colors of a P-47D; a modern photo of it can be seen here, and one that's a bit older can be seen here). At least six N-model Thunderbolts have survived, three (includeing 348) are on display, two are airworthy, and one more is being restored.

The back of the photo has some extensive notes hand-written in blue ink which read:

"Saturday, June 23, 1951, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas
This is a picture of the F-47 Thunderbolt. It's said to go over 500 mph. In 1945, this fighter was the only plane of its type to exceed 500 mph. It's a long-range fighter-bomber. It was used in European Theater + Pacific. Armament consist of 8 - 50 cal. machine guns, 10 rockets + 2 - 2000# bombs. Gross Wt. with auxiliary belly tank is approx 16,000 pounds."

Possibly the rarest of the aircraft on display at Lackland is P-82E 46-262, which was once one of two such aircraft on display at Lackland. The other, 44-65162 was restored to flying condition by the CAF and flew at airshows until it suffered a gear-up landing. After much legal wrangling, the Air Force took it back, and it sits, only partially complete, in storage at Dayton. Out of the five surviving P-82s, there are only two complete airframes, 46-262 and P-82A 44-65186, which resides at the Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton.

The back of the photo above reads: "Taken Saturday June 23, 1951 Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio Texas. This is a picture of me next to a twin Mustang. It's said that this plane goes very fast."

Some current photos detailing the aircraft's condition can be seen here. Note, in comparison, that in 1951 the canopy was still clear, and the hard-points can still be seen under the wings.







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The Lackland AFB parade grounds as seen in Google Earth. The P-82 is in the lower right corner, and the P-47 is just one
aircraft up from it. The B-17 is in the upper left corner.

Sioux City Sue

Sioux City Sue as she sat in 1947 at the Sioux City Airport.

This is a cautionary tale, a story of what not to do, and the loss that results from not taking proper care of things.

Sioux City Sue was a Boeing-built B-17G, serial 42-102542. Nothing that I can find is known of its war-time career, but at some point it was converted to a TB-17G trainer, likely stationed at Sioux City, Iowa. During the war, Sioux City Army Air Base was one of the primary locations for B-17 heavy bomber basic flight qualification training, and it was here that then-Captain Jimmy Stewart and his crew trained.

After the war, on November 5, 1945, the aircraft was transferred to the Reconstruction Finance Corp., an independent government agency that disposed of surplus materials. Then, in 1946, it was sold to the American Legion and set up on display as a war memorial at the Sioux City Airport.

That's where our three photos were taken. The processing dates on the back of the photos indicate that they were taken in May, 1947. The photos were taken by one of the friends of the gals shown, and the photos were then placed in a photo album with captions indicating that the plane was visited by this group of teenagers on a school "ditch day". Sometime later, some probably well-meaning person decided to update the album in the currently popular scrapbooking style. The photographs were cut up using popular specialty scissors, the backs slathered with white glue, and the prints affixed to scrapbook paper. The images were then further damaged as the album was taken apart once again. I almost passed them up. As damaged as they are, though, they still show a remarkable B-17. And so, the first lesson of the day: friends don't let friends cut up vintage photos!

What happened to the photos kind of mirrors what happened to the aircraft. While in general, it's a good thing to have a war memorial, and at the time a B-17 must have seemed like a good thing to use for the memorial, what didn't seem to be considered was how to maintain that memorial. As can clearly be seen in the photos, the plane was open to the public, and in the six years that it sat there, it was pretty thoroughly trashed. It had only been in place for about a year when these photos were taken, and already damage is evident (note, for instance, the broken plexi in the upper turret). And this is the second lesson of our story: don't let vintage aircraft just sit and rot! (I write this with the B-17 in Tulare, California in mind...though fenced off from vandals, its condition continues to deteriorate.)

An article titled “Flying Fortresses at So. St. Paul” by Noel Allard in the February 2010 edition of On Final, the newsletter of EAA Chapter 25, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, describes what happened subsequently. “Sioux City Sue...had been derelict at the Sioux City airport for many years, and was in very bad condition. So much so that a local junk dealer would only offer $300 for it."

At this point, a man named Jack Lysdale, the owner of Lysdale Flying Service and operator of South St. Paul’s Fleming field, enters the story. Lysdale was authorized by the government to purchase and refurbish surplus aircraft from the War Assets Administration. He had already refurbished two other B-17s. Allard's article continues: "The plane was owned by the local American Legion, which had purchased it after the war and Lysdale bought it [in 1952] from them with the intention of cannibalizing it for parts. To ferry it, Lysdale had to deal with missing and torn control surfaces, five years of bird nests in every cranny, and a smashed tail caused by its being moved several times on the airport, being pushed by a bulldozer! A daunting task, but Lysdale was up to it and it soon [in 1953] arrived at South St. Paul. The plane was rebuilt in 18 months and sold for over $100,000 in 1955 to Aero Service Corp. of Philadelphia."

Also taken the same day by the kids ditching school, was this Mid-Continent
Airlines DC-3 at the Sioux City Airport

Aero Service Corp. had been around since 1919, and specialized in providing aircraft all around the world for aerial photography and geo survey work. B-17s, with their long range, stable flight characteristics and high-altitude capabilities were an ideal platform for the type of cartographic aerial photography that Aero Service performed. Sue is known to have flown in Arabia and visited the RAF base in Idris, India in August 1958. And that's where the trail goes cold. Supposedly, Sue crashed sometime later in 1958, but I can find no details of where or why. Readers, of course, are invited to comment below with any information that you may have.

Update: It has come to the attention that now even the Iowa Air National Guard is looking for Sue...as is detailed in this article.

[Big tip o' the hat to Noel Allard and On Final editor Pete Gavin for permission to quote from the newsletter!]

Sparkling New Fortresses



Fifteen B-17Fs lined up (don't miss the one behind the hangar)
awaiting delivery.

When I found today's glossy 8x10 photo at a swap meet, it was the end of the day, I only had $5 in my pocket, and the vendor was packing up to go home. He'd wanted a lot more for it, but reluctantly gave it up for my five spot. It's a little bit wrinkled and battered, but a gorgeous image, nonetheless.

In the photo are no less than fifteen Block 27 Boeing B-17F Flying Fortresses, either just before or just after delivery in 1942 (because of the lack of an Army Air Corps stamp on the back, I'm guessing that this is a Boeing Company photo). Note the tight grouping of serial numbers, and the lack of guns installed in the waist positions. And then there's the guy on the bicycle...like couldn't the photographer have waited just a few more seconds for the dude to get out of the frame?

From what I could find, the Block 27 F-models were built in Seattle, but this photo was clearly not taken there (here, for instance, is a view of B-17s on the Seattle ramp). I'm thinking maybe Wichita? If anyone has better location information, please comment below.