Sir Baboon McGoon was an American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress last assigned to the 324th Bombardment Squadron, 91st Bomb Group, 8th Air Force, operating out of RAF Bassingbourn (AAF Station 121), Cambridgeshire, England.

It was recovered and repaired, then later ditched in the North Sea on 29 March 1944 after a bombing run over Germany—the plane's 10-man crew all survived but became prisoners of war.

[5] On 10 October 1943, the aircraft ran out of fuel while returning to RAF Bassingbourn, and made a belly landing in a wet and muddy sugar beet field near the village of Tannington, Suffolk, England.

Once on its own gear, it was determined that it could be flown out of the field and several weeks of mobile repairs resulted in the engines and propellers being replaced and temporary patches being applied.

An 1,800-foot-long (550 m) steel mesh temporary runway allowed the aircraft to depart the sugar beet field in November 1943 and fly to a maintenance depot for more extensive repairs.

The increased drag of a non-feathered propeller and the open bomb bay doors, combined with the lost power from one inoperative engine, caused them to slow down and forced them to fall out of formation.

The crew recalls that they were then attacked by German fighter aircraft and they lost one or two more engines and had to drop down to the cloud deck (tops around 5,000 feet (1,500 m)) to attempt to continue flying.

Struggling to keep their two rafts together in heavy 5-foot (1.5 m) waves, they feared they would freeze or drown in the icy water at approximately 60 degrees north latitude.

These documents are titled "Report On Capture of Members of Enemy Air Forces" and are shown with a "PLACE: 8th E-boat Flotilla, Haarlem".

The June 1944 issue of Popular Science featured the article of the successful restoration of Sir Baboon McGoon from its October 1943 belly landing.