Thanks for taking the time to colorize these photos. Brings many of them to life as we've never seen!
Did someone mention 4th Fighter Group??
In photos taken during the period 1 April - 13 April 1944 "Shangri-La" displayed
both a half red/half white nose *and* the full red version - as seen in this quick Google check:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=gentile ... 2986%40N07The 'fun' part for guys like me is that in nearly all of the pics taken during the first two weeks of April at the height of the highly publicized "ace race" between Gentile, Beeson, and several others in 8th Air Force, 43-6913 is shown with 21 kills on the scroll. Photos taken very shortly before and then after the crash show Gentile's (then credited) 23 air and 7 ground total of 30. There are no known photos of the plane with 22-29 victories. I wrote a very detailed analysis of the evolution of her markings about 7-8 years ago when my "One-Man Air Force" print came out, and IIRC (been a while since I've studied this subject in detail) my conclusion was that kills 22-30 were added to the scroll - and the bottom half of the scroll "expanded" with more white paint - all at the same time just before her prang on 13th April. This conclusion was based on pretty convincing photographic and "date of kills" evidence, including one shot showing a painter actually expanding the scroll area with white paint and masking tape.
Much more than you wanted to know, I'm sure! Oh, Shangri-La's wheels were also painted "4th FG red".
Cheers!
Wade
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