Just A Car Guy: B 25 Sunday Punch, has quite to cool paintjob around the nose guns! And a cool story! (this post motivated by all the wonderful readers who boosted my spirits today and got me posting instead of glumly applying to jobs)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/9529957@N06/5955799013

First used in 1915, the term “Sunday punch” is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:
-A powerful or devastating blow, especially: a knockout punch
-Something capable of delivering a powerful or devastating blow to the opposition; saving his "Sunday punch" for the end of the campaign.

In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, work on the atomic bomb continued when Frances Smith Gates, editor of The Oak Ridge Journal, first used the phrase "Sunday Punch" on Sept. 14, 1944:

“Right Now, the most important thing you can remember in your daily work is this: our part of this war will not end with the defeat of Germany. As the District Engineer [Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols] pointed out in his message to the workers of this project last week, Japan is our final objective … We can defeat the Jap, decisively and more quickly, by remembering that every work-hour registered here is a Sunday punch aimed straight at Tojo’s button. Remember this when we defeat Germany. Stay on the job and finish the Japs!”

Wanting to literally deliver a Sunday punch to the Japanese, workers of the J.A. Jones Company decided to donate overtime pay from two Sundays in February 1945 toward purchasing a bomber.

The momentum grew to include all workers at the K-25 Area

J.A. Jones, Comstock-Bryant Electric Co.,

Midwest Piping, William A. Pope Co.,

Schulman Electric Poe Piping,

Lambert Brothers, Birmingham Slag Co.,

Reilly-Benton Co., and Happy Valley Enterprises.

The K-25 Bomber Committee and the companies and the workers donated $150,000 toward the purchase of a B-25 they named Sunday Punch.

On March 18, 1945, A Davis, chairman of the committee, formally presented the plane to Lt. Col. Sanford Chester of the Army Air Forces at the Knoxville Airport while a "huge crowd looked on."

https://www.oakridger.com/story/lifestyle/2023/08/31/sunday-punch-k-25-workers-go-above-the-line-of-duty/70671004007/

Immediately following the dedication ceremony, Sunday Punch was ready for war and sent to the China-Burma-India theatre as a member of the “Earthquakers” medium bomber unit.

Upon landing in India, the plane was amazingly assigned to pilot Lt. Thomas Evans of Knoxville who was interviewed for the Oak Ridge Journal’s July 19, 1945 edition. “I was in my glory. I had my own airplane, a brand-new one – and bought by the home-town folk! I knew you folks would get a great kick out of it, too.”

Immediately following the dedication ceremony, Sunday Punch was ready for war and sent to the China-Burma-India theatre as a member of the “Earthquakers” medium bomber unit. Upon landing in India, the plane was amazingly assigned to pilot Lt. Thomas Evans of Knoxville who was interviewed for the Oak Ridge Journal’s July 19, 1945 edition. “I was in my glory. I had my own airplane, a brand-new one – and bought by the home-town folk! I knew you folks would get a great kick out of it, too.”