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The two photographs at the top of this double-page spread show the later appearance of the aircraft, with one swastika painted on the nose and the number of painted
bombs corresponding to 36 missions. Both photographs reveal the inscription around the front escape hatch, “Van’s Flying Circus” and “Entrance.” The photo on the left
shows M/Sgt. Glenn M. “Zip” Myers, ground crew chief.
Warming up the engines of “Hard Luck” on the hardstand.
Ground crew members seated on the right
half of the elevator.
Friday the 13th with Crew No. 13 commanded by
Lt. Don Mitchell. That’s not completely true either.
However, Mitchell’s crew flew this aircraft on their
first mission and some missions after. Hard Luck’s
hardstand was supposed to be the one with the
number 13, and she did actually occupy that spot
for a time. But it wasn’t the only designated spot,
as, for example, 29 comes into play as well. And
the 100th Bomb Group really was part of the 13th
Combat Wing.
It would appear that the first mission of this air-
craft was a raid on factories in Paris on September
3rd, 1943. At that time, the aircraft did not have
its name yet. That didn’t come about until a few
days later. Lt. Mitchell’s bombardier, Earl G. Hafen,
loved to sing the popular ‘Ode to Bombers’. At the
end of it he added his
‘... and when they mention
bombardiers, they always add Hard Luck!
‘ The
connotation extrapolates figuratively, of course,
to ‘bad luck’, but also a hard-earned happiness.
The first bad luck came during one of the crew’s
first missions with aircraft 413. However, who
knows if it was actually the fickle finger of fate...
The crew had to return to base early from the mis-
sion due to a malfunction and someone declared
‘That’s hard luck!’.
In conjunction with the bombar-
dier’s song and the number 13, the last two digits
of the serial number, the idea came quickly and
the inscription soon appeared on the left side of
the nose, where the bombs of the missions flown
and later also the swastikas marking the enemy
fighters destroyed by the crews of this aircraft
were added. Mitchell’s crew soon received one of
the first B-17Gs assigned to the unit and left Hard
Luck behind. They named their new B-17G s/n
42-31074 Cahepit and flew most of their missions
with it.
Hard Luck was thus inherited by Van Steenis’
crew mentioned at the beginning and it is the main
one that is associated with this ship. By February
25th, 1944, they had flown eighteen missions, most
of them in Hard Luck, which, despite all sorts of
close calls, always returned them home safely.
Van Stenis’ crew parted ways with their aircraft,
which had a reverent row of mission markings
painted on her, in March 1944, when they were
promoted to lead crew. They were then assigned
a new B-17G s/n 42-31903 coded LN
-
T, named
‘Hard Luck II’. However, this name never appeared
on the nose of the aircraft, so finally there were
two ‘Hard Luck II’s with 350th Squadron. One sort
of for themselves, named by Van Steenis’ crew, the
other by the ground crew of the original Hard Luck
after their worn but still great B-17F was lost. The
last operational flight of Van Steenis’s crew, on
May 7th, 1944, was to Berlin. Most of the crew were
scheduled to complete their combat tour that day.
At that time, the quota had already been increased
to thirty missions. For those who had already
completed part of their original tour commitment
at the time of the increase, the increase was by
a proportional amount. For this crew, the figure
was 28. Over Berlin, the formation ran into a wall
Variant 1
Speciál B-17F / The Bloody Hundredth 1943 INFO Eduard
59
June 2024