3
While at Ohio State, Vernon briefly dated a girl named Jeanne. However, later She ended up falling for his brother Bud
and were married. There was obviously no bad blood between Vernon and his brother, as he named his P47 after
Jeanne.
By the score markings alone on the side of the plane, Vernon was obviously a skilled and successful pilot. You can count
for yourself the bombing, ground attack/sweep (the brooms), and ground cover markings (the umbrellas).
Bud was lost in combat in 1944, and Vernon took leave to return to his family. He returned to the front in December of
the same year. On January 26
th
1945, returning from a mission to destroy an ammunition dump in Germany, Lt Vernon L.
Zieske of 36th Flight Group, 23rd Fighter Squadron, was killed in action when his aircraft crashed near Jodoigne,
Belgium. High mountain terrain and low cloud cover with no visibility, claimed many pilots during the war.
One side note about “Jeanie” scheme details; We try our best to recreate the model from actual photos rather than rely
on plates from other sources for the sake of accuracy. For example, all the color plates show “Jeanie” written above the
nose art, but this could not be found in any of the actual photographs of the aircraft. The photo below shows the nose
art without any name added. We’re not saying that models with “Jeanie” written on the cowling are wrong, just that we
could not find any actual evidence for it to be there. We lovingly recreated the pretty girl painting though :)
Some of these planes are hard to find documentation, but the search always reveals riveting details about the lives of
those who defended our freedoms in battle. Lest we forget.
