Finding Loren

US, P-47D-16-RE, 42-75963, Gow Job, 79th Fighter Group, 86th Fighter Squadron, 21 April 1945, Bologna, Italy

AirCorps Aviation of Bemidji, MN is honored to assist in the relay of the poignant life story and service of 1st Lt Loren Hintz who was killed in action flying a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter over Italy on April 21, 1945.
Follow AirCorps Aviation for daily updates as this 12 year quest culminates with the excavation on July 23, 2016.

Read the full story on Aircorps Aviation’s website.

I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of working with the great team at Aircorps Aviation and here is the result: a P-47D-16-RE of the 79th Fighter Group in Italy in April 1945. The profile is very hypothetical, except for the tactical code and serial number. There are very few available photos of 79th FG razorback Thunderbolts, although the colours of 79th FG bubbletops are better known.

If you have any information regarding the markings of Thunderbolts in the 79th FG, or even better about Lt Loren Hintz’s aircraft, please contact me and I’ll update the profile and forward the info to AC.

The final version of the profile. Loren Hintz’s Thunderbolt was probably still in the standard Olive Drab/Neutral Grey scheme.

2 thoughts on “Finding Loren

  1. The D-16 run of P-47’s would have still been factory olive drab overall. It wasn’t until the D-21 and D-23 models that any bare metal razorback 47’s existed. The above paint would not have existed on a D-16 most likely.

    1. True! We considered both possibilities, and if you visitthe AirCorps Aviation link in the article, you’ll see that the OD version was the one finally retained. At the time I published this, we still weren’t sure. As stated, this profile is very hypothetical as we had practically no source material.

      Earlier razorbacks often did end up stripped of their OD paint, but in that case, the stenciling should probably disappear as I doubt the mechanics would have bothered to repaint it, except perhaps for the data block located beneath the windshield (and even then, the entire data block zone was often left as is, leaving an OD rectangle on an otherwise NMF fuselage).

      I’ll update the article to include the OD version.

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