Tuba'Rao of the skies

Air Classics, Feb 2003 by Lloyd, Dean W

HOW A VERY COLORFUL B-24J LIBERATOR GOT ITS NAME

Our B-24J USAAF s/n 44-40101 was built by Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego, California, and delivered to Pueblo, Colorado, along with 50 other Liberators during 1944. We flew our third phase training flights and the POM inspection missions in our new aircraft. Wife the last group to move overseas with our new aircraft as a group - 491st Bomb Group.

Before leaving Pueblo, the decision was made to paint a shark's face on our bomber. Our flight engineer, T/Sgt. Curtain, was an excellent artist so the honor was bestowed upon him to paint the war face on our bird as we prepared to go into battle.

We flew overseas by the southern route, making our third stop at Belem, Brazil. The weather was rough when we landed late in the afternoon and we parked on a hardstand somewhere on the outskirts of the field and went into town.

Early the next morning, the enlisted men on the crew went out to the airplane to do some equipment checks. It turned out we were going to be stuck in Belem for about two days, waiting for some oil cooler parts for the number two engine.

Our only mode of transportation was a "bus" that would take use from the operations building out ta-our Liberator. Now, this bus looked like a 1928 Chevy which had been cut off behind the driver's seat. It had a flat wood bed with wood rails and benches running down both sides.

The cloud deck was very low with a lot of ground fog that morning and the fog was just starting to break up. Our bus driver was a pleasant elderly man and he drove around the taxi strip until he came to the intersection to our hardstand. He started to turn when, all of a sudden, he locked up the brakes - slamming us against the front rail and nearly losing his load of passengers. I have never seen such stark terror on a man's face.

Looking toward the hardstand, we saw the fog was just beginning to lift and our bomber was looking at us with those big white teeth and blood-shot eyes. The driver would not move - he just kept yelling "TUBA'RAO! TUBARAO!" over and over. Unable to make any sense of our hysterical driver, it was obvious he wasn't going to budge so we had to walk the rest ro the way to the bomber.

About half an hour later, our pilots came out. The ground fog was gone but they had the same driver and received same treatment as we had. Even trying to pull rank failed they ended up walking to the plane like we did. Puzzled, we decided to try and find out what "Tuba'rao" meant.

There was a civilian employee working at the desk in operations. tie was a nice voting individual so we took him our problem. He told us the driver had lived his whole life either on or near the Amazon River. Driving the truck was a wartime job for him. "Tuba'rao" was a loose translation of "Tiger Shark" in Portuguese. It seems there are many dialects of Portuguese spoken in several countries in South America. That was enough information for us.

We had a short crew meeting and decided not to pass up a name like that! Shortly and decided flew to our base in tip England, with our bright name like that! Shortly after, we flew to our base in Metfield, England, with a shark face and the name Tuba'rao painted our bright new sides. 24J with a shark received many compliments and the needless to say, we were very painted on both sides. our bird.

NOTE: This interesting vignette was submitted by Pat Harkin, daughter of Dean W. Lloyd. Dean served as a nose gunner aboard Tuba'rao with the 8th Air Force, 2nd Air Division, 491 st Bomb Group, 854th Bomb Squadron.