Warbird Information Exchange

Has anybody ever seen instances where the aircraft number of a plane (or a portion of it) has been stenciled onto aircrew clothing? I'm looking at an image of a WWII C-47 crew chief (ETO) who was on aircraft # 42-32827, and on the up-turned bill of his B-2 cap, the number "827" is stenciled. I know that 827 is not part of his service number, nor is it any sort of unit number that he was associated with. Has anybody ever seen examples that indicate that this might have been a practice among some aircrew?

Thanks,

Bill

I have seen numbers stenciled on equipment issued by the personal equipment section to keep track of issued gear. Aircrew could be assigned to different a/c depending the a/c availability. Having the a/c number stenciled would only help if the gear stayed on board the a/c all the time.

I have observed that in Troop Carrier the crew chief and, to a lesser extent, the radio operator, flew with THEIR aircraft regardless of who the pilot and copilot were. If the plane was transferred to another Group the CC went with the plane. Obviously this is not hard and fast, but I have seen it often enough that I can actually track a plane based on the CC's name. So in that regard the CC in your photo having the number of HIS plane on his hat would not be that odd.

So, is this a photo of Claude Walker?

Thanks for the replies. Sorry, I meant to say radio operator, so it's Willis Brown. But, right, Claude Walker was often the crew chief. And it does appear that Brown more or less stuck with 827.