Some Punkins
Some Punkins was the name of a
Victor number 84) modified to carry an atomic bomb during World War II
.
Airplane history
Assigned to the
Wendover Army Air Field, Utah
.
It left Wendover on June 8, 1945, for Tinian and arrived at
large 'A' tail markings of the 497th Bomb Group as a security measure and had its Victor changed to 84 to avoid misidentification with actual 497th BG aircraft. It was named Some Punkins and its nose art applied after the atomic bomb missions. While a number of sources attribute the name to a 1930s comic strip, the nose art suggests a possible reference to the "pumpkin bomb
" missions the 509th Composite Group flew as combat rehearsal for the atomic bomb operations. However, the phrase was also in use by 1917, based on letters from Indiana referring to someone being 'some punkins' to be called first to an accident, meaning 'important.'
While on Tinian it was used on 13 training and practice missions and five combat missions to drop
Yokkaichi, and Nagoya
. Some Punkins was the only B-29 of the 393d BS flown exclusively by its assigned crew on all operational missions, and is cited by Joseph Baugher as possibly dropping the last bomb of World War II in its attack on Nagoya on August 14, 1945.
In November 1945 it returned with the 509th to Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. On March 1, 1946, while at Kirtland Army Air Field in preparation for assignment to Operation Crossroads, it was struck while parked by a taxiing B-29, incurring severe damage to its forward fuselage. The airplane was transferred to the 428th Base Unit at Kirtland in April 1946 and declared damaged beyond economical repair. In August it was deliberately set afire as part of firefighting training and totally destroyed.
Other aircraft named Some Punkins
Two
Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire
, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Sources
- Campbell, Richard H., The Silverplate Bombers: A History and Registry of the Enola Gay and Other B-29s Configured to Carry Atomic Bombs (2005), ISBN 0-7864-2139-8
- 509th CG Aircraft Page, MPHPA