I TELL YOU BOYS, IT'S HEAVEN (PIC 3)

NAME

SER

BLK

SERIAL #

RCL/#

V#-P

PHOTO CREDITS

I TELL YOU BOYS, IT'S HEAVEN

190

44-40953

00-3

N/A

Contributor - Brendan Wood

Info Contributor - Rich Bauer
My Father, Walter "ZOOT" Bauer, told me that he is the one who painted this aircraft. He seems to recall painting it for 4 bottles of scotch (which he refers to as "Liquid Currency") while he was on Munda, in the South Pacific. Apparently, the pilots picked up liquor in New Zealand. My dad was in the 58th Fighter Control 13th Air Force A-3 Operations. His main duty, as I understand it, was to plot planes on large maps. Because of his artistic skills, he made a number of those maps himself. He laughingly talks about how they also tried to track incoming Japanese. But apparently they tended not to cooperate and flew zigzag rather than in straight lines. He tells me that when they first arrived on Tonga that they only had one map. He was asked to make copies using the grid system.