Flak Bait, the Martin B-26 Marauder, and the Two Hundred Two Missions That Made Her the Most Combat-Decorated American Aircraft of World War Two

A single Martin B-26 Marauder flew more combat missions than any other American aircraft in the Second World War. Her name was Flak Bait, and she is preserved today at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia - battle damage, patches, and all.

The Airplane Nobody Wanted to Fly

The Glenn L. Martin Company designed the B-26 Marauder in 1939. She was fast - 290 miles per hour at 10,000 feet - but her small wings and two massive Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines created a wing loading that made her brutally unforgiving of mistakes.

Pilots had names for her. The flying prostitute - no visible means of support. The Baltimore whore. At MacDill Field in Florida, the B-26 was killing training crews at a rate alarming enough to trigger a congressional investigation. Senator Harry S. Truman stood on the Senate floor and questioned whether the aircraft should be pulled from production entirely.

The airplane’s reputation was deserved - for pilots who didn’t understand her. She did not forgive slow approaches. She had almost no margin on a single engine. But pilots who flew her at her speeds and on her terms discovered something the early accident rate obscured: she could absorb punishment and keep flying.

Flak Bait was going to prove that 202 times.

The Aircraft and Her First Crew

Flak Bait rolled off the Martin plant in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1942. Her official designation was Martin B-26B-25-MA, serial number 41-17952. She was assigned to the 449th Bombardment Squadron, 322nd Bombardment Group, Ninth Air Force.

Her pilot was Lieutenant James Farris of Kansas. He named her after his brother’s dog - a casual, almost joking name that turned out to be the most literal label ever painted on an American bomber.

Her first combat mission was May 14, 1943. The B-26 groups were flying tight, low-level formations against German coastal targets and airfields in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium - close enough to every light anti-aircraft gun the Germans could bring to bear. Flak at that altitude wasn’t an abstract hazard. A fragment the size of a thumb could sever a control cable, rupture a hydraulic line, or punch through the fuselage and find a crewman.

Flak Bait flew into it, mission after mission, and came home.

Two Hundred Two Missions: The Campaign Record

Flak Bait’s combat record spans the entire northwest European air campaign. She was over the beaches of Normandy in June 1944. She struck German oil facilities, rail yards, and V-1 launch sites along the French coast. She flew in support of Operation Market Garden - the September 1944 airborne attempt to bridge the Rhine in Holland. She was over the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 as the German army made its last major offensive push.

Each mission added more damage. Each night, her ground crews patched what had been hit.

Her last combat mission was May 6, 1945 - two days before V-E Day. She finished the war having flown more missions than the Memphis Belle, more than any B-17 whose name pilots know. The airplane they once called the widow maker had outlasted them all.

The Crew Chiefs Who Made It Possible

Fifty different crews flew Flak Bait across her 202 missions. Most were under 25 years old. They flew their tours and rotated home if they survived. The airplane stayed.

The men who deserve equal credit are the crew chiefs and mechanics who kept her airworthy. They went over that airplane every morning, found new damage, and fixed it before the next briefing - in French mud, in English rain, in the hours before dawn. Some repairs were done with sheet metal and rivets. Some used whatever material was available. By the end of the war, she had been patched and repatched so many times that she was barely the same aircraft that left Baltimore. She was a ship of Theseus made of aluminum and determination.

Flak Bait carries more than 1,000 individual holes in her skin - evidence of every crew chief who worked through the night so another crew could fly in the morning.

After the War: Decades in Storage

The Smithsonian Institution acquired Flak Bait in 1949. For decades, only her nose section was on public display at the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington. The rest of the airframe sat in storage.

When the Udvar-Hazy Center opened in 2003, the full scope of what a proper restoration would require came into focus. This was not going to be a cosmetic effort. Flak Bait had spent decades in a warehouse. Her aluminum had corroded. Her systems had deteriorated. And embedded throughout her structure were 202 missions’ worth of honest battle damage.

The core question for the restoration team: how do you preserve that accumulated history without compromising structural integrity?

The Restoration Philosophy That Gets It Right

The Smithsonian’s team made a choice that separates the great museum restorations from the merely good ones. They preserved the battle damage.

The patches stayed where they were. Corrosion was stabilized rather than erased. The airplane is being treated as the historical document it is, not as a show aircraft trying to look factory-fresh. Because Flak Bait is not a factory airplane. She is a combat veteran, and every patch, every replaced panel, every improvised repair is evidence of the men who kept her flying.

The restoration team at Udvar-Hazy has been reassembling the complete aircraft - bringing together the long-displayed nose section with the stored airframe. The goal is not airworthiness but full structural integrity and historical fidelity. When visitors stand next to her, they are looking at a real airplane that was really there.

The Last Surviving Combat B-26

Martin built just over 5,000 B-26 Marauders between 1941 and 1945. The type had such a difficult reputation and was so quickly retired after the war that most were scrapped. Very few complete examples survive.

Flak Bait is the only remaining B-26 that actually flew in combat. The only one.

Other museums hold B-26 airframes. None of them hold this story. She carries the serial number, the name, and the physical evidence of 202 missions - more than any other American aircraft of the war. That is not a category she shares with anyone.

Why This Matters

Flak Bait is not a museum piece in the sense of something polished and put behind glass. She is a document written in aluminum and rivets and engine oil. The language she is written in is the language of what it cost to fly that campaign - 202 missions, more than 1,000 hits from enemy fire, 50 crews, one airplane.

For pilots, she is also a reminder of what airmanship under pressure actually looks like. The B-26 killed pilots who didn’t respect her and kept alive the crews who understood how to fly her. The ground crews who maintained her through the mud and rain of northern Europe are as much a part of that record as anyone who ever sat in the left seat.

The restoration underway at the Udvar-Hazy Center is the final act of that story. It is the institution saying, formally and permanently, that this airplane and what it represents is worth getting right.

Key Takeaways

Flak Bait, a Martin B-26B Marauder (serial 41-17952), flew 202 combat missions with the 449th Bombardment Squadron, 322nd Bombardment Group - more than any other American aircraft in World War Two.
The B-26 earned a deadly reputation during training due to its high wing loading and powerful engines, but rewarded pilots who flew her at proper speeds and procedures.
50 different crews flew Flak Bait; ground crews who kept her patched mission after mission are an equal part of her record.
The Smithsonian deliberately preserved her battle damage during restoration - treating the aircraft as a historical document, not a show airplane.
Flak Bait is the only surviving B-26 that flew in combat, on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.