Skin with Kill Marks

[Jatopack]

Hi everyone. My grandfather served on the Madame-x as a tail gunner. I know he also helped do repairs. They did fly at midway. I have an interview that he did in my daughters room I can dig out tomorrow that has more specifics. He mentioned that they had sunk a ship which would be the ship painted on the piece. He also talked about shooting down a zero from it and there is some other general talk about other battles and places they visited. He was also in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed with a back injury and they booted him out of the hospital to make room for the more seriously wounded. Real good interview I'll try and post if you like. Ron Cole did paint a picture as mentioned above. Luckily I was able to get the 001/100 which I plan to frame one day soon. When my grandfather passed my dad was able to get me his flying wings from the estate which was really cool. The aircraft was lost after my grandfather had already rotated back to the states. I have the MACR file on my other computer. I was really surprised that this section of skin is still around!! I figured it was in the bottom of the pacific somewhere. I'm actually quite jealous to be honest lol. Would be a great addition to the other stuff I have from him in regards to his service. If you ever do want to get rid of it I would seriously like to talk to you about it as it has a personal connection to our family. Anyways I will pull up the stuff I have maybe tomorrow or the next day and post on here any other info that you may find helpful. As far as the red dots, I am guessing, but I would maybe think those were bombing missions over mainland Japan? I know the aircraft was lost on a mission to japan... just a guess..

[Eric2575]

Awesome!!!!

[Jatopack]

I tried to upload the pdf of the interview my grandfather gave on Dec. 7 1943 in Minot, ND, but the file size was too big. Looks like on June, 7th 1942 at the end of the battle of midway he says that they bombed the destroyer and sunk it. Looks like they shot down 3 planes that day as well but had their navigator wounded so they went back to base. He said it was several months later they were on a search mission over the Northern Solomons and Bougainville when they found 5 zeros trying to shoot them down. They got all the zeros after a long fight but had lost an engine and the plane got pretty beat up. That may be shown on some of the pics on the internet if you do a search for madame-x s/n 41-2525. If you want the full transcript private message me and I can email it to you or I can try to put it online somewhere and supply a link. Hope that helps explain some of the history be hind it.

[Jatopack]

Also, I forgot to add on the last post...He was in the 11BG 98BS. They were called the Grey Geese if you wanted to do and more research

[MAP]

Thanks Jatopack for this great background information