362nd Fighter Group

The 379th FS's 42-28890 in its early guise as "the Birmingham Special I," flown by Lt. Walter Whited, photographed at Reims/A-79 in the summer of 1944. The neat skull-and-thunderbolt nose art and the black front of the cowling was painted over in yellow and the codes were cleaned up when the plane received the dorsal fillet extension later in 1944. She was salvaged after a close air support mission around Bastogne on Dec. 23, 1944 after returning to base with 25 flak holes in the airframe.