Capt. L. A. Tate, veteran of aerial combat, originally served with 41st FS/35th FG in 1943. In November, 1943, he was reported to have shot down two enemy aircraft in the form of Nakajima Ki-43 ‘Oscar’s, the symbols for which could be found on the right side of the aircraft. A partial wreckage of the fighter was discovered in the seventies at the former air base at Tadji, and based on a reconstruction of the stencils on the fuselage, the aircraft has been allocated the serial number 42-19027, which was a P-39N. Period photographs clearly show the bird to be a P-39Q, suggesting that the reconstruction was inaccurate.
