Aircraft Notes

The following notes offer brief explanations of various aspects of the aircraft.

Serial Numbers Each aircraft was assigned a serial number at the time of manufacture. The serial number consisted of the year of manufacture and a one up number - eg. Jamaica Ginger (42-97210) was builit in 1942. The serial number was displayed on the tail of the aircraft in an abbreviated form - no leading 4 and no dash eg. 42-97210 was displayed as 297210. In most documents of the time, aircraft were identified only by their last 3 digits, eg. 42-97210 was known as aircraft 210. Sometimes this causes confusion when more than one aircraft had the same last three digits.

B-17 Models The 388th flew only B-17's but they flew various models. While they did have some E Models these were only flown for training missions and not combat. They started flying mainly F Models and later in the war they got G Models. They also flew a PFF or Pathfinder model that replaced the ball turret with a radar. These aircraft were used as lead aircraft (only one or two were flown in a group). Initially they were scarce and used only for bad weather but towards the end they were used on every mission.