Date:	Saturday 29 July 1944
Time:
Type:	Boeing B-29 Superfortress
Owner/operator:	USAAF
Registration:	42-6274
MSN:
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 3 / Occupants:
Other fatalities:	0
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Dengfeng County-Level City, Zhengzhou, Henan Province -   China
Phase:	Combat
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:
Destination airport:

Narrative:
Boeing B-29 #42-6274, nicknamed Lady Hamilton, took off from Chengdu to attack Japanese-occupied Chinese territories. This bomber did not come back to base [MACR 6946].

Records about the loss of this B-29 were generally ambiguous, but most agreed that it was shot down by Japanese and that three crew members died while the rest were rescued.

NEAM (2008): They lost an engine enroute to the primary target and elected to go to secondary target. They were shot down by a Jap Zero over China.
G. Blume (2016): Lady Hamilton (42-6474, 794BG), damaged by friendly-fire from Chinese Curtiss P-40s, is shot down by Shōsa Takehisa Yakuyama (9 Sentai).
Li (2015) initially misbelieved that this B-29 was shot down over Anshan, which stretched credulity in that no Chinese partisan could help the crew in that area. However, he then discovered the actual crash site in the local historical records of Dengfeng. As quoted by Li (2015), the B-29 crashed into a hill named Mayuchuan. The pilot did not bail out and perished in the crash. Two other crew members were murdered by Chinese bandits. The rest of the crew members were rescued by communist-led guerillas.

Li, X. 2015. B-29 in China. Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China: Sichuan People's Publishing House. (in Chinese)
New England Air Museum (NEAM). 2008. The Story of The “Billy Mitchell Group” 468 H-Bomb Group – From the C.B.I. to the Marianas.
G. Blume. 2016. Timeline of Strategic Aviation – 1944. Accessible at: https://www.gblume.com/timeline-of-strategic-aviation/wwii-1944/

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
17-Dec-2024 08:14	RDV	Added