Further research into identifying BT-13A s/n 41-11538. I found a Greenville Army Flying School document after stumbling upon Rick Prucha's website dedicated to his father's (Lou Prucha) service. Rick has a great collection here;
http://www.rgprucha.com/prucha_brennan/lou_wwii/lou_wwii_home.htmTraining classbooks are here, including the Greenville book
http://www.rgprucha.com/prucha_brennan/lou_wwii/lou_wwii_training_classbooks.htmWith the help of Mr. Allan Hammons of Greenwood, MS, we found that our BT-13A (s/n 41-11538) is represented in this classbook. Although not a photo of the aircraft, there is a photo of a data board which clearly contains '41-11538' on the board. Below are some excerpts from this book, including the image with the serial number visible.
j050_19421227-19430227_basicbook_p00_frontcover by
Jordan Deters, on Flickr
19421227-19430227_BasicBook_p07 by
Jordan Deters, on Flickr
19421227-19430227_BasicBook_p07_cropped_data_board by
Jordan Deters, on Flickr
A closeup of '41-11538';
19421227-19430227_BasicBook_p07_cropped_serial_number_41-11538 by
Jordan Deters, on Flickr
M-62A wrote:
I would urge you to invest in at least one more accident report relating to one of the Greenville BTs with an AAF serial no. very close to 41-11538. It could point to whether there is any correlation between AAF serial no. and the Field No.
I recently opted to acquire additional accident reports for Greenville BT-13's of serials very close to 41-11538. These included 41-11541 and 41-11545 (in addition to the report for 41-11537 previously acquired). Upon initial inspection, these reports revealed no sequential assignment of fuselage codes with respect to aircraft serial numbers. Particularly, the following codes were determined for these three aircraft.
Accident reports for 41-11537 and 41-11545 can be viewed here;
https://flic.kr/s/aHsm7rfnKnhttps://flic.kr/s/aHsm7D7HfpWith no obvious order to fuselage codes with respect to serial numbers, I began to review my records of photographs that I have acquired. I cross referenced the serial numbers of the accident reports to my photos, only to realize the data board image (referenced above) that contains 41-11538 also contains 41-11545. After reviewing this image, I recalled a previous suggestion that the image might indeed contain reference to the fuselage codes assigned to these aircraft. On the board, above the gentleman at the typewriter's head, there is a column of "100-series" numbers. Since the numbers are sequential by line in the area visible (i.e. 108 to 118) it can be assumed that the number associated with 41-11545 on this board is 107, the same as the fuselage code shown in the accident report (GR107).
Applying this logic and carrying the 100-series number back to the line for 41-11538, this aircraft would have been assigned the code "GR104". This is the most definitive evidence I've found thus far, and seems quite compelling. I am working to acquire additional accident reports for aircraft serial numbers visible on the data board to see if their fuselage codes match the corresponding 100-series number on the board.
This has been an interesting research effort, and certainly did not expect to determine the fuselage code from a "data board" image from an ops or maintenance office. I always assumed the only way I would've found the code was via a photograph of the aircraft itself.
Lastly, I'd like to put out a request for anyone who might have access to BT-13 photographs from Greenville AAF, MS, to look for a photo of "GR104".