Another MTO Question

We own an L-4J and are also looking for some additional information on the plane. The Army Air Corps number is 45-4594, so the buzz number should have shown as 54594.
Based on information from Maxwell AFB; The plane was accepted Feb 1945. About 23 March it left Norfolk VA for OHAM, which I understand was Bari italy. It arrived in Italy early April (2nd or 9th of the month).
It was returned to the US via Newark on 9-24-45, from there to WRAD by rail, then flown to Ft Sill arriving on 20 Dec 1945.
I have been to Ft Sill with no luck on finding any information on this plane. How do I find out where this plane may have been while in the MTO? Is there any chance of finding what unit it was assigned to? I would like to get it back to it's correct wartime markings (currently wearing 2nd Armd Div markings 49 J).
thanks

You might seek out Ken Wakefield, (List Member) he might be able to help you.

Ken Wakefield may be able to help, but the chances of finding your particular airplane mentioned in some surviving record are fairly slim. It seems that the only records that were saved that anyone knows about thus far are for 9th Army in the ETO. The reason this happened for 9th Army is because the Artillery Air Officer for 9th Army, Col. Rob't Leich, for some reason took the daily unit diaries home with him at the end of the war when everybody else was canning them.

I'm afraid I don't know of anyone who has any type of record for the Med. Now Mine happened to be one of the ones from 9th Army, and I didn't know any better when I started looking 5 years ago. If somebody had told me then there wasn't a snowball's chance, I wouldn't have tracked Ken down and he wouldn't have so many grey hairs from dealing with so many idiot questions from me! (Don't bother him too much-we're hoping he'll finish his third book on L-birds soon!)

Good luck. I think that your best bet would be to find out which artillery units served there at the time and start leaving messages in reunion websites and the like to ask if anyone might remember your tail number. It's a long shot, but that's all we have left now.

Paul Smith

Got some good feedback from Mr. Wakefield on our planes time in Italy. Thanks for all of Ken's efforts to document and preserve the history of these planes.
Although it is a needle in a hay stack we are going to keep looking for information or images of the plane in (or as it was in) theater. You never know, a friend of mine recently received a picture of his L-5 in flight during the war years.

BlueSkyL-4 wrote:

Got some good feedback from Mr. Wakefield on our planes time in Italy. Thanks for all of Ken's efforts to document and preserve the history of these planes.
Although it is a needle in a hay stack we are going to keep looking for information or images of the plane in (or as it was in) theater. You never know, a friend of mine recently received a picture of his L-5 in flight during the war years.

That sounds interesting. You ought to see if he'd come over here and tell us about it! That sounds like a neat story.

Ryan