"Day's Pay" - Murals on Waymarking.com

The "Day's Pay" is a B-17 bomber bought for the Army Air Corps by the Hanford Engineering Works employees, each of whom donated a full day's pay.

"Give a day's pay and send a bomber on its way" was the campaign slogan that inspired the 51,000 workers to contribute nearly $300,000.00 over a 2 month period to purchase a B-17-G for the nation's defense effort of World War II.

The plane was manufactured by Boeing at Seattle and delivered to the U.S. Army Air Force on July 12, 1944. In a ceremony at Hanford Airport on July 23, 1944, Hanford workers christened the plane "Day's Pay".

The plane later served with the 8th Air Force in England.

In March 1945, its was decorated with the Air Medal, five oak leaf clusters, and two major battle stars.

The "Day's Pay" flew a total of 67 missions and survived the war and was considered by those who flew it to be "a lucky plane" because no crew members were ever lost.

Keith Maupin in his article The Bomber, the Bomb, and the Bombers: Myth, History, and Traditions makes a very convincing argument that the Richland High nickname "Bombers" has nothing to do with the B-17 bombers depicted in this mural but refers to the atomic bomb that the student's parents had helped create.


The following information was supplied by Richland resident, DrNostrand.

The 50,000 workers mentioned in the article were not housed in Richland at all. (You should be able to check this out by taking a stroll through the museum in the Federal Building provided of course that it is still there.) The construction workers were housed at the Hanford Construction Camp out on the Hanford Engineering Works itself. The 50,000 construction workers lived in special trailers quite different from the housing built in Richland. You can see pictures of the construction camp and read various details about it in the Report on the Atomic Bomb (if I recall the title correctly) which some long time Richland residents should still have copies of. (My Father had a copy.)

Richland itself was quite proud of its Atomic heritage for some time. The annual town fair was called "Atomic Frontier Days", the bowling alley was called "Atomic Lanes" or some such thing. Basically, "Atomic" frequently showed up in names of local interest until the ban the bomb movement gained traction in the 1960's.

The short term change of the Col-Hi team name from Broncos to Beavers is also quite indicative and it would have had nothing at all to do with a supposed beaver dam north of Camp Hanford! It much more likely had to do with the beaver symbolism as "nature's builder" as in the mascot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since the project was called the "Hanford Engineering Works", picking a beaver as a mascot is an obvious piece of pride in local industry and the "Engineering Project" itself. The change to "Bombers" shortly after the August 1945 atomic bombings is another strong piece of evidence.

Day's Pay was delivered in time to serve in the European theatre. This means that any interest in naming the Col-Hi team after the airplane would have expressed itself in the 1944-45 school year and would not have waited until the 1945-46 school year. Further, as already mentioned, the construction camp people who donated their pay to build the plane lived more than a dozen miles from Richland!

Finally, throughout the 1950's and 1960's the school mascot was a green and gold bomb!! NOT an airplane!! The bomb would be set up vertically on its tail fins during half time of every basketball game played on home court.

City: Richland, WA Location Name: Richland High School Auditorium Artist: JPSoto?? Media: cement Date: Not listed Relevant Web Site: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   05/22/2012 kennelbarb visited it 05/03/2009 Gredgeman visited it 07/09/2008 travelpare visited it 06/15/2008 DrNostrand wrote comment for it

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