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This snippet is from Tales to Noses over Berlin by Ray Bowden, page 63.
These missions took place a couple of months following Ihlenburg and LaMotte’s
missions of 44/04/18 over Berlin and 44/04/22 over Hamm.
This is more just about the plane “Wells Cargo”.
Jerry Ramaker would return to Berlin twice more on 24th May and again on 21st June,
both times flying in Wells Cargo. His crew had been assigned to the plane after their first
mission, to Hamm, on 22nd April and named it after their pilot, Lt. Charles Wells and the
famous Wild West stage coach company of Wells Fargo. The B17G had originally been
delivered to the USAAF back on 18th December 1943 after rolling off the line at Boeing,
Seattle. “The crew had an idea of painting a stage coach with wings instead of horses,”
recalled Jerry Ramaker, ball turret gunner, “but we only got as far as the name, painted in a Disney-style – redo on a yellow back-ground. We also had our jackets painted likewise by a guy on the base”.
The crew’s combat tour in Wells Cargo also took them to many tough targets
including Hamm, Hanover, Augsburg and Zwickau. Charles Wells earned the DFC and
later commented about his plane to a local newspaper, “Wells Cargo always brought us
back and, likes it predecessor Wells Fargo, carried and delivered the goods successfully.”
The Wells crew finished their combat tour in late June 1944 and returned to the States –
Wells Cargo soldiered on for another full year before retuning to Bradley Field on 24th
June 1945. In December of that year, the plane was finally dispatched to the smelters
furnace at Kingman, Arizona.