Aircraft History
Built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Plant at Omaha, Nebraska, The Great Artiste was accepted by the Army Air Forces on April 20, 1945, and flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, by its assigned crew C-15 (1st Lt. Charles D. Albury, Aircraft Commander) in May. It departed Wendover for North Field, Tinian on June 22 and arrived on June 28.
It was originally assigned Victor (unit-assigned identification) number 9 but on August 1 was given the circle R tail markings of the 6th Bomb Group as a security measure and had its Victor changed to 89 to avoid misidentification with actual 6th BG aircraft. It had its nose art painted after the Nagasaki mission, and the name purportedly referred to undisclosed talents of the bombardier, Capt. Kermit Beahan.
In addition to its use on the nuclear bomb missions, The Great Artiste was flown by five different crews on 12 training and practice missions, and by Albury and crew C-15 on two combat missions, one of which was aborted and the other in which it used a Pumpkin bomb to attack the railroad yards at Kobe. Capt. Bob Lewis and crew B-9 flew it to drop a pumpkin bomb on an industrial target in Tokushima.
In November 1945 it returned with the 509th to Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. On September 3, 1948, on a polar navigation training mission, it developed an engine problem after takeoff from Goose Bay Air Base, Labrador, and ran off the end of the runway when attempting to land. Heavily damaged, it never flew again and was eventually scrapped at Goose Bay in September 1949, despite its historical significance.
Read more about this topic: The Great Artiste (B-29)
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