Mouses's B, The

Air Classics, Mar 2001 by White, Mindy

NOTED AVIATION ARTIST TROY WHITE HAS ADDED ANOTHER MUSTANG TO HIS STABLE OF PAINTINGS

The new profile, titled The Mouse's B, depicts the pilot's side view of Major George E. Preddy's North American P51-B Mustang. The 20 inch x 34 inch painting shows Preddy (nicknamed "Mouse" in his Greensboro, North Carolina, high school) piloting his first Mustang Cripes A' Mighty P-51B HO*P 42-106451 over Europe in the Spring of 1944. On 12 June 1944, during a mission to Rennes, France, he scored a victory by shooting down an Me 109G. Preddy tallied 5.83 air-toair victories out of his total 26.83 in this aircraft. Thanks to

the efforts of the 352nd Fighter Group Association, and especially photo archivist Sam Sox's relentless pursuit of photographs. Troy had the opportunity to be the first artist to produce a painting of the obscure aircraft.

Sam Sox relates his excitement on finally locating photographic evidence of the nose art. "Here are my recollections about the pursuit of the nose art for Preddy's first Mustang. I am proud to be able to share this most significant discovery with the aviation history community. The infamous 'B'!

"I received the very first two photos from Red McVay in the late 1960s - a 3/4 right rear shot and the one of Lew Lunn squatting on the wing which showed eight kills and him holding up ten fingers. In the passing 30 years, I never saw another shot of it in the some 10,000 pictures I would ultimately inspect, not even in the background.

"Over the years, I have carefully scrutinized all photos that contain aircraft in the background with a lOx power magnifier. I placed a lot of hope in locating more pictures when I located Lew Lunn's widow in 1969, but she only had two pictures or so and they were of the P-47. Hope built up each time I would locate the 487th photographers, of which there were three. I really became excited when the late Sgt. Paul Grabb loaned us his collection of large format negatives that he had taken of the 487th FS. Although he had approximately 1000 negatives in all, nothing turned up for Preddy's first Mustang!

"About four years ago, I had the occasion to investigate a pilot's wing forgery. Someone claimed to have acquired wings belonging to well-known ace Maj. G.E. Preddy. The wings and the accompanying documentation turned out to be a forgery. There was a second claim of another pair of wings supposedly belonging to Preddy's 'wing man,' incorrectly inferring that Preddy only had one wing man. The pilot involved was Lt. Carl Tafel, who flew about seven missions in, Preddy's flights in June and July 1944. In the process of uncovering the truth about the claim of the second pair of wings, I met Tafel's niece, Carla Tafel Schell.

"At the time of our conversations, I decided not to ask if she had photos since we had just been dealing with a forgery attempt. Her only contact with me had been over the telephone, so I just did not feel comfortable in approaching her about any photos she may have had. In August 2000, Mrs. Schell called 352nd FG Historian Bob "Punchy" Powell to tell him that she was to be in Atlanta and that she would like to meet someone. from the 352nd FG. She planned to be bringing her Uncle's scrapbook. Punchy, recalling that we had met via the telephone several years earlier, let me know of her visit and that we would have yet another scrapbook to review.

"A week after her visit, Punchy forwarded the scrapbook to me. I glanced over the pages and noted several photos of Carl and his first D model Mustang which he named Nancy M. Punchy advised me that Carla was to attend the 352nd FG Association reunion in Richmond and wanted me to return the book to her at that time. Recalling that I had seen several pictures I wanted to add to the Association's photo/negative archive, I combed the pages of the scrapbook again. In the middle of the book there were two 4x5 contact prints which Carl had captioned 'My first Mustang.'

"Upon closer examination, I noted that on the photo showing a 3/4 front view there were eight black crosses. Then I discovered four more white Balkan crosses in the blue anti-glare field, the exact same style that Preddy had used on his most famous P-51D Mustang, Cripes A' Mighty 3rd. Something about the B model I was looking at did not quite add up. The pictures I had obtained from Red McVay previously showed the Mustang to have the "greenhouse" canopy. In this photo, this P51B had a Malcolm hood installed and a whip antenna! The photo had been taken with the nose area in the shade making it difficult to distinguish the nose art.

"The second picture from Tafel's scrapbook was a 7/8th's rear shot showing the application of the D-Day invasion stripes. The individual aircraft letter 'P' on the fuselage had been painted over with white and black stripes. On the rudder was a letter 'R.' I noted that the letter had originally been the letter 'P' with the 'R' leg of the letter added. I then located my old photo which showed just the canopy area and the eight black kills and, sure enough, this had to be Preddy's aircraft!