The story · Chapter 14
Salvaged Sally
What ever happened to 42-94973?
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29 May 1944
42-94973 comes down at Bulltofta with her left stabiliser demolished, a wheel shot out and the hydraulics gone.
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Oct 1944 – Mar 1945
Rebuilt at Bulltofta out of the parts of four aircraft. A complete new tailplane goes on, along with new engines.
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The repaint
In the hurry the serial is transposed — 294793 for 294973 — and nobody catches it.
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A name at last
The American technicians christen her Salvaged Sally. She had flown fourteen combat missions with nothing but letters on her tail.
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7 July 1945
She leaves Sweden for England. Beyond that there is no further word of her.
I wish I could say for sure that my Dad was greatly responsible for getting her back in the air. Although she needed a lot of work she did fly again. It seems as though they took parts and pieces off of 4 planes and built one. Here are pictures of the tail before and after.
Notice that in there hurry, the numbers on the tail got transposed.
Along with a new tail, new engines and a lot of other things, for the first time, she also gets a name.
This is from the book “Making For Sweden” page 93.
“The aircraft, although badly damaged, was repaired between October 1944 and March 1945. A complete new tailplane was installed, but when the serial number was painted on the aircraft the figures were ‘294793’ painted instead of the correct 294973. In July 1945 it was flown back to England, having been given the name Salvaged Sally by the United States technical personnel working at Bulltofta.”
Salvaged Sally actually flew back to England on July 7th, 1945. Well, I guess she made it back. All I really know is that she left Sweden for England that day. I don’t have any other word as to what happened to her.