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| USAAF 5th AF 35th FG 41st FS
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Aircraft History Built by Bell in Buffalo, New York. Delivered to the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) as P-39N Airacobra serial number unknown. Disassembled and shipped overseas to the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) and reassembled. Wartime History Assigned to the 5th Air Force (5th AF), 35th Fighter Group (35th FG), 41st Fighter Squadron (41st FS) "The Flying Buzzsaws". Assigned to pilot Edwards Park Nickname "Nanette" with squadron letter N and nose number 74. During the middle of 1943, this Airacobra operated in New Guinea until November 1943. Edwards Park writes in Nanette: "Nanette was the nickname of the author's P-39 Airacobra, a plane that he describe the type as "She is beautiful and graceful at her best, while quirky and difficult to handle when not lovingly handled." The metaphor of women and machine drives the author's descriptions of his love affair with this quirky mate. "Even the planes unique vibrations, like when the P-39's massive 37mm nose cannon is fired has a mild sexual stimulating feeling for the pilot who is nearly straddling the gun." On November 7, 1943 while parked in a revetment at Nadzab Airfield, destroyed during a Japanese air raid by Ki-21 Sally bombers. Nanette by Edwards Park pages 180, 182: "On the next day 18 Japanese Betty Bombers [Ki-21 Sally] came high over Nadzab and dropped their load of antipersonnel 'daisy cutters' with devastating accuracy... and walked toward a thick black column of smoke fed by savage flames in one of our revetments. Nanette's revetment. She had received a direct hit. It took her half an hour to burn... Two other planes had been damaged; the alert shack was shredded by shrapnel; six pilots discovered that they had been nicked; and one crew chief had become a soggy red bundle of clothes at the bottom of a bomb scorched slit trench. It was the crew chief for [P-39 Airacobra] number 75 - the same man who had helped me get out of it when I had been shot up in that big raid on Moresby, all those months ago." Relatives Lisa Park (daughter) References Nanette (1989) pages 180, 182 Angels Twenty (1997) by Edwards Park Thanks to Lisa Park and Edward Rogers for additional information Contribute
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