Spirit of MartinezWhat a Family Kept
The painted nose of Spirit of Martinez, 1945

44-6838

Spirit of Martinez

B-17G-65-DL Flying Fortress. Assigned to the 335th Bomb Squadron, 95th Bombardment Group (H), Station 119, Horham, Suffolk.

Crew
10 stations; this crew flew nine
Engines
Four Wright R-1820 Cyclones
Combat hours on her
More than 400 by the April engine change
Lifetime missions
53, under every pilot who sat left seat
Frank’s missions in her
29 of 31 sorties (two in borrowed ships)
Frank Calicura in flying kit standing at the painted nose of a B-17, his hand on the word MARTINEZ
Frank Calicura at the nose of 44-6838, Horham, 14 February 1945 — the morning of mission one. The name is already on the ship.Family collection
Three officers standing under the painted nose of Spirit of Martinez, two of them shaking hands
Under the nose, 1945. Frank Calicura in flying kit at left; Capt. David Olsson — another Martinez man — in the overcoat; Col. Jack E. Shuck, group commander, taking the handshake. The book records the moment as official recognition, not a friendship.Family collection
Nine airmen posed in two rows under the nose of a B-17 painted Spirit of Martinez
The crew of 44-6838, Spirit of Martinez, on the hardstand at Horham, 1945. The name is already on the nose — this is the ship after the Army caught up to what the men had decided to call her.Family collection
Painted B-17 Spirit of Martinez, serial 6838, call sign E, over two rows of yellow bomb symbols on an olive flight jacket
The B-15. Spirit of Martinez, tail 6838, call sign E, thirty bomb symbols. Subtract two mornings in borrowed ships and the crew record accounts for twenty-nine. The jacket and the database disagree by one.Family collection

How she was named

Martinez put up $855,000 toward its Sixth War Loan quota and doubled it. The surplus was meant to buy a B-29. The War Finance Committee, chaired by Ray S. Taylor, learned a newly commissioned local pilot was forming a crew and wrote to him instead. Frank agreed. The crew chose the name themselves; the Army’s ceremony came after they had already flown her nine times under it.

The plaque and the paint

The committee was disappointed to learn the “name” was a small plaque under the instrument panel, not nose art “big enough for enemies to read without their glasses.” A surviving photograph shows the name painted across the nose in script a good deal larger than a plaque. Both may be true in sequence. Nothing dates the painting.

Never an abort

“We can brag about her, Ray,” Frank wrote. “In all those missions; not once did we or those others who were fortunate to fly her have to turn back; abort as we call it.” Not that she was lucky, or that the crew was — that the ship had never once failed to reach a target she was sent to.

Borrowed mornings

On 17 March 1945 she flew to Ruhland with John Bradley’s crew while Frank’s men stood down. On 5 April and 7 April, while she sat with her cowlings off for a third engine change, Frank’s crew flew The Red Fox and Belligerent Beauty. By 9 April they were back in her.

The ferry ship that was not her

Special Orders 337 assigned the crew Ap. No. 44-6830 for the overseas movement — eight serials away, same production block. She went to the 92nd Bomb Group at Podington, was battle-damaged over Berlin on 18 March 1945, force-landed in Poland, and was written off on the 26th.

What happened on landing

Joyce remembered him saying the saddest part was flying her back. “When he landed, before he got his stuff off, they had dismantled it and towed it away. He said if he had known, he would have gotten souvenirs.” She went on to South Plains, Texas, that summer, and to the Kingman scrap heap in December — not quite eleven months after assignment to his squadron.

Fate: Sold for scrap at Kingman, Arizona, 19 December 1945. Last flight 21 June 1945, Horham to Bradley Field, Connecticut.