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The Wulfe Hound was the first flyable B-17 to be captured by the Germans. On December 12, 1942, the Wulfe Hound and 19 other B-17s departed from RAF Molesworth to bomb the Luftwaffe servicing base at Romilly-sur-Seine. Due to bad weather, some bombers had to turn back, but the persevering B-17s successfully bombed the Rouen-Sotteville railroad yards with 40 tons of bombs. They faced opposition from at least 30 enemy fighters.[1][2]
The Wulfe Hound, a B-17, sustained damage and started losing altitude while evading pursuing fighters within cloud cover. First Lieutenant Paul F. Flickenger, the pilot, realized they couldn't return to England, so he performed a wheels-up landing in a hayfield near Melun, with the ball turret guns pointing downward.[3][2] Regrettably, the crew's attempt to destroy the aircraft by igniting a fire, involving stuffing a parachute into the fuel tank and using a Very pistol to shoot a flare into it, was foiled by the arrival of German forces. Despite managing to destroy the radio and other equipment, the crew was unable to initiate the fire before the arrival of the German forces and they fled into the woods. Flickering and the Bombardier would be captured, two more crewmen were apprehended by the Gestapo, and the rest, along with the crew from the earlier downed plane managed to make it back to Molesworth.[3][4]
After the aircraft was transported to Leeuwarden Air Base in the Netherlands by a German salvage crew, temporary repairs were carried out to restore its flyable condition. However, the damaged ball turret was not replaced. Subsequently, the aircraft was painted with the German Balkenkreuz and assigned the Stammkennzeichen alphabetic code DL+XC with yellow paint on the undersurfaces. Moreover, the nose art, depicting a hound with a broken German fighter in its mouth and the text Wulfe Hound above the image, was removed.[5][1][3]
On December 14, the Wulfe Hound, accompanied by two Bf 110 fighters, was transported to the Luftwaffe Test and Evaluation Center at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield. The relevant Luftwaffe fighter bases and flak units along the flight route were duly informed about the aircraft and its transit. Despite these precautionary measures, the Luftwaffe marked B-17 encountered gunfire but sustained only minor damage.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c mike1960research (2022-09-25). "Captured Allied Planes 1940-45". Mike's Research. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ a b Moncur, Gary L. "303rd BG(H) Combat Mission No. 6" (PDF). 303bg.com.
- ^ a b c "Wulfe Hound - captured B 17 - 1:72 scale by Popeye the Sailor - finished". Model Ship World™. 2020-01-03. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
- ^ "WTF? — Captured Enemy Aircraft". Vintage Wings of Canada. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
- ^ "Wulfe Hound". www.303rdbg.com. Retrieved 2024-06-25.