Somehow we managed to get down safely. He always brought us back. Tail gunner Staff Sgt. John P. National Archives. Of the 12, Bs produced, Memphis Belle is famous for being the first Eighth Air Force bomber to complete 25 combat missions over occupied Europe without a crewman being killed and returning to the United States.
You were so busy. Each of the 10 guys had a job to do. It is teamwork. Belle participated in some of the most hazardous raids of the war, when the Luftwaffe still had a commanding fighter superiority and defenses of the Nazi regime were strong. She was bullet-ridden, flak-battered and on five separate occasions had one of her engines shot out. But she slugged it out with Messerschmitts and Focke Wulfs and absorbed their cannon fire without flinching.
The longest period the storied plane was out of service was five days, when transportation difficulties delayed a wing replacement. They weren't all milk runs. A crewmember looks over damage to Belle's vertical stabilizer. Her crew dropped more than 60 tons of bombs over France, Germany and Belgium, knocking out supply depots, railway yards, aircraft plants and an assortment of military bases.
With amazing accuracy—thanks in no small part to the sterling work of bombardier Vincent B. Nazaire and Brest, docks and shipbuilding installations at Wilhelmshaven, railroad yards at Rouen, submarine pens and powerhouses at Lorient and aircraft factories at Antwerp. Looking back on those days, Morgan remembered no easy missions, no milk runs. The secret to a successful B mission, he decided, was tight formations—so tight that the wings often nearly touched in flight. I also feel there was a bit of divine intervention for the crew.
Each of the crew received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. Morgan had just begun a romance with Margaret Polk, from Memphis, Tenn.
Other crew members had their own ideas for a name, but Morgan persuaded one of them to vote with him, so now he had two votes for Belle and eight for other names. Memphis Belle it was, and a belle in a bathing suit was painted on her side. Her soon-to-be famous nose art had originally been created by George Petty for Esquire magazine.
The bathing suit is painted blue on the left side of the B and red on the right. Morgan flew Belle to Memphis on her shakedown flight. There she was officially christened, with Margaret Polk as an admiring witness. We heard later that we also blew up a cellar full of cognac. We flew over Rouen, where we were attacked by about 25 German fighters. They were coming at the nose so I got off a lot of shots. I shot over rounds. I saw two Bs go down in front of us. When they fire at you head-on, it looks as if the whole plane is exploding.
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Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. Morgan's original co-pilot was Capt. James A. Verinis, who himself piloted the Memphis Belle for one mission.
Verinis was promoted to aircraft commander of another B for his final 16 missions and finished his tour on 13 May. He rejoined Morgan's crew as co-pilot for the flight back to the United States. The "Hell's Angels" B of the rd Bomb Group completed 25 combat missions on 13 May , becoming the first B to complete the feat, one week before the Memphis Belle. The aircraft was the namesake of pilot Robert K.
Morgan's sweetheart, Margaret Polk, a resident of Memphis, Tennessee. Morgan originally intended to call the B, Little One , after his pet name for her, but after Morgan and his copilot, Jim Verinis, saw the movie Lady for a Night , in which the leading character owns a riverboat named the Memphis Belle , he proposed that name to his crew.
The 91st's group artist Corporal Tony Starcer reproduced the famous Petty girl nose art on both sides of the forward fuselage, depicting her suit in blue on the aircraft's port side and in red on the starboard. The nose art later included 25 bomb shapes, one for each mission credit, and eight swastika designs, one for each German aircraft claimed shot down by the crew of the Memphis Belle. Station and crew names were stenciled below station windows on the aircraft after her tour of duty was completed.
Morgan wrote that after leaving the Asheville Regional Airport he decided to buzz the town, telling his copilot, Captain Verinis, "I think we'll just drive up over the city and give them a little goodbye salute. When he observed the courthouse and the city hall two tall buildings that are only about 50 ft 20 m apart dead ahead, he lowered his left wing in a 60 degree bank and flew between the structures.
He wrote that the city hall housed an AAC weather detachment whose commanding officer allegedly complained immediately to the Pentagon , but was advised by a duty officer that "Major Morgan She was flown to Memphis in July and stored until the summer of when she was placed on display at the National Guard armory near the city's fairgrounds. She sat out-of-doors into the s, slowly deteriorating due to weather and vandalism.
Souvenir hunters removed almost all of the interior components. Eventually no instruments were left in the cockpit, and virtually every removable piece of the aircraft's interior had been scavenged, often severing the aircraft's wiring and control cables in the process.
In the early s, another mayor had donated the historic aircraft back to the Air Force, but they allowed her to remain in Memphis contingent on her being maintained. She was still open to the elements, however, and prone to weathering. Pigeons would also nest inside the tarp and droppings were constantly needing removal from the B Dissatisfaction with the site led to efforts to create a new museum facility in Shelby County.
In the summer of the Belle was disassembled and moved to a restoration facility at the former Naval Air Station Memphis in Millington, Tennessee for work. In September , however, the National Museum of the United States Air Force , apparently tiring of the ups and downs of the city's attempts to preserve the aircraft, indicated that they wanted her back for restoration and eventual display at the museum at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio.
On 30 August , the MBMA announced that a consultant that they hired determined that the MBMA would not be able to raise enough money to restore the Belle and otherwise fulfill the Air Force's requirements to keep possession of the aircraft.
The Belle arrived safely at the museum in mid-October and was placed in one of the Museum's restoration hangars.
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