Great post Jack. I like the B-17 and the B-25's artwork.
The topic of the Pegasus painted Dakota was raised by me a while back on PlaneTalk forum here, but remained unanswered - now I have more pieces to the puzzle. Read the link and then come back to the below bit.
http://forum.planetalk.net/viewtopic.ph ... ght=madill
Here is a quick digital photo of the photos in the magazine mentioned in the link above. Sorry it's none too clear, I don't have a scanner here at home.
I have now looked up the career of Sqn Ldr
Samuel Jackson Madill DFC, OBE, AE, and Order of the Crown (Yugo), and discovered that he served with:
No. 1675 Heavy Conversion Unit, RAF - on Liberators,
No. 90 Squadron RAF,
No. 108 Squadron RAF
He then flew with the Special Liberator Flight, RAF - aka "X Flight" - which was made up of two aircraft and four RNZAF pilots specially formed to drop gear to partisans in Yugoslavia and perform other special ops.
The other three pilots in that Special Liberator Flight were:
Sqn Ldr Desmond Malcolm Rolph-Smith DFC, The White Eagle of Yugoslavia 1st Class
Sqn Ldr John Austin Henry Smith DFC, Order of the Crown (Yugo)
and F/Sgt
D.S. Clifford (anyone know his full name?)
Later the Flight was renamed as No. 148 Squadron RAF when it was expanded. It must be this unit that the caption referred to as a New Zealand Transport Squadron because there seemed to be predominantly kiwi crews.
As you can see here, No. 148 Squadron used a wide variety of types, but the C-47 is not mentioned.
http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/148_wwII.html
No. 108 Squadron that Madill is also listed as serving on also supported the Special Ops Liberators according tho this page:
http://www.historyofwar.org/air/units/RAF/108_wwII.html
In that second photo in my post above the chap in the centre is Flt Lt
Stanley George Culliford DSO, Virtuti Militari (Pol), RNZAF, who did indeed fly with No. 267 Squadron and performed one particularly amazing deed which you can read about on my forum here (it's well worth the read):
http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?ac ... 380&page=1
So, why was Madill in a No. 267 Squadron Dakota? I wonder if, being special ops like No. 267 Squadron, did No. 148 Squadron maybe work together with them and Madill borrowed one of 267's Dakotas for the day when the photo was taken?
Or did all the Special Ops flying units use the Pegasus badge, sort of like the Paras? Really interesting stuff. If anyone can add more I'm really keen to learn. It's neat to think there was a secial ops unit made of of (at least mostly) Kiwis in the RAF.