Nice try DamonE, this can't be either Skeeter or The Rebel as both have been already accounted for by other collectors. A little research and asking around will confirm this. As for the number of kills, these stay with the pilot, not the aircraft, so as landers progressed through the several P-40's he is recorded as using he could have marked each one progressively with the number of kills he had at the time.
I have several shots of Skeeter and The Rebel both during and after use by several pilots including Landers showing between 2 and 5 kills. The problems start when people assume that, the kills, ie 1,2,3,4 and 5 must be the order of the pictures taken, but in fact the dates often do not correlate. This is because of the change in piltos, so they would add a kill in say Jan 43 for that pilot, then when he moves on to another aircraft, remove 2 kills to reflect the new pilots rating who is taking over the older aircraft. It is confusing but the beauty in it is that it very quickly identifies fraudsters who calim to have a certain aircraft flown by ace so and so when a check of official records prove ace so and so didn't have that machine at the time he maxed out on his kills ie he was on P-38's.
A nice example of this is Landers standing next to Skeeter at a time when he had actually changed aircraft, but for the PR or private collection of Landers etc the date of the picture is assumed to be Landers with his current mount. Its like when you sell your favourite car and you want one last picture of you with it before you hand it over to the new owner. Sometime in the future when looking back at the picture people say'oh look, chris had a Corvette in 75' which is partially true except I sold that Vette in 75 and moved on to the 57 coupe". And as most good historians of the 49ers know, Landers never flew the Long Horn in any operational missions where he scored kills in it. I was just wondering if this was your type of source,
Profile 01: P-40E serial 41-5647 'White 81' of 2Lt John D Landers, 9th FS/49th FG, Darwin, Australia, Summer 1942. Another member of Andy Reynolds' deadly 'Blue Flight', 'Big John' Landers scored his first six confirmed victories in the 9th FS during 1942. His P-40E, SKEETER, in which he scored his first four kills, mimicked the gaudy diving eagle on Reynolds' aircraft. After completing his combat tour in the Pacific, Landers went on to achieve greater fame as commander of several Eighth Air Force fighter units. He finished the war with a total of 14.5 confirmed victories.
from this site:
http://asisbiz.com/il2/P-40/P-40E-49FG9 ... nders.htmlSo is Landers standing next to his or reynolds aircraft???????
But to answer your Question DamonE, Landers got his first 4 kills in 2 different aircraft according to 'official' records
SD