On Jun 30, 2013, at 11:48 AM, John Sessoms <[email protected]> wrote:
> I found an article in Wikipedia that said they were used to assemble the > formations before the bombers would fly off to Germany. The paint scheme > made it easy for the bombers to find it up in the sky. > > From what I gather, the weather in England was frequently overcast. When > the bombers took off they had to climb above the clouds alone. Once they > were above the clouds, the assembly ship provided an easily identifiable > visual reference for assembling the bomber group. > > Once the formation was complete the group leader would take over to lead > the mission and the polka-dot plane would return to base. > > Apparently they used older aircraft that were no longer able to be flown > on bombing missions over Germany. Thanks, John. That occurred to me. But I really never have seen another photo of a polka-dot B17. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Weir Decatur, GA USA [email protected] "The most important thing is the tee-shirt." - Samara Alnafdage -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
