The letter showed up in the North Portland mailbox this spring, just a few months after the funeral. Nestled among magazines and bills, the white envelope looked like a piece of junk mail, and Susan Heyward was ready to toss it in the recycling bin.

On a whim she ripped it open. As she made her way through the four-page letter, she discovered an unheard of story about her mother, Suzanne Holcomb, who'd just died at age 94.

With each line, Heyward discovered a mystery of sorts, about a boy, a girl and a plane called Sierra Sue II.

The P-51 fighter flew 14 missions over Germany during the later years of World War II. After the war, it bounced around from Sweden to Nicaragua to California. A Minnesota doctor bought the plane in 1977 and flew it for fun for three decades, but when he got too old for such adventure, he parked the vehicle in a hanger where it gathered dust and continued to deteriorate.

Almost four years ago, a Minneapolis businessman bought the plane and hired AirCorps Aviation to restore it. While repair crews began tearing the P-51 apart, the company historian set out to find out all he could about Sierra Sue II for a book to be published when the restoration was complete.

"This is a big deal in the war birds subculture," Chuck Cravens said. "If it's not accurate, we're not preserving history, we're making fiction. We need to find out about the plane and the pilot, everything needed to humanize the story of the plane."

When Cravens looked at historical photos of Sierra Sue II something intrigued him.

"The artwork on the side of the plane was different than anything I'd ever seen on a fighter," he said. "Most are racy women with sexy poses and bare breasts. This had black bar over the breasts."

Why?

WWII fighter jet, Sierra Sue II, named after Portland woman 18 Gallery: WWII fighter jet, Sierra Sue II, named after Portland woman

"Here's a young pilot who's been given a hot rod of a plane," Cravens said. "He's in a war, thinking fighting, drinking and women. And that's the image on his plane?"

Tracking down the pilot wasn't hard.

Lt. Robert Bohna earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with six Oak Leaf clusters during World War II, and he'd actually flown two version of the Sierra Sue.

He crashed landed his first P51 after being hit by enemy fire over Hanover, Germany. Days later he was given a second P-51, which he flew over Germany 14 times before the war's end.

During his research, Cravens found an author whose father flew in the same squadron as Bohna. He learned that all of Bohna's squadmates asked the sergeant in charge of plane names and nose art for a woman with bare breasts to take into combat.

Bohna, who grew up close to the Sierra Nevada mountains had allowed his fellow pilots to assume that the name on the side of his plane referred to "Sierra Sue," a 1941 movie featuring the actress Fay McKenzie, and that the woman on his plane was McKenzie.

But to Cravens, that didn't make sense.

"This was not some random movie star, or her breasts would have been exposed," he said. "There was a rumor that the commander had ordered the bar across the breasts. That didn't make any sense. Could it be someone that Bohna knew and he wanted to make her look modest?"

He tracked down Bohna's family in California. An AirCorps team flew to Sonoma, met with Bohna's relatives and learned that the strange symbols in the black bar covering the woman's bosom were the brand the family used on their cattle herd.

Cravens learned that Bohna, who died in 2010 after a career as a commercial airline pilot and car dealer, grew up on a cattle ranch in Raymond, Calif. and had graduated from the small, local high school in 1941. His sister told Cravens that her brother had a "big crush" on a girl in his class. He liked the girl so much, the sister said, that he had named a plane after her.

The girl's name was Suzy Lang.

"She said the feelings weren't mutual, and it was what she called unrequited love," Cravens said. "She wasn't mean or anything. It was just a crush that boys have on girls in high school."

Back in Minnesota, Cravens began digging and found a woman who ran a small historical museum nearly 2,000 miles away in Raymond, Calif. The museum was only open for three hours each Sunday, but the curator uncovered old year books from Raymond Granite Union High School. Within the pages she found photos of Suzy Lang and Bohna that she scanned and sent to Cravens.

"I couldn't make any headway," he said. "She was nowhere. Eventually it got to the point where I was spending too much time looking for her. I had to get this book done."

He got help from a volunteer researcher, Glory Loebs, who finally found a 91-year-old woman in Raymond who recalled Lang but didn't remember her parents' names.

Then, one night this spring, the Raymond museum curator sent Loebs an old reunion list that included Lang's full name: Suzanne Norma Lang. That led Loebs to an obituary published in early February in the online edition of the Contra Coasta Times: Suzanne Norma (Lang) Holcomb had died in Oregon on January 15.

Loebs wrote the letter Susan Heyward received earlier this year, the one offering up "an amazing story to tell you which involves your family!



And she added a personal touch: "I am so sorry for the recent loss of your mother. I truly felt I got to know her through researching and I was saddened to learn of her passing."

She explained the project and listed Craven's phone number. Heyward called him, and was stunned.

If her mother had known about Sierra Sue II, she'd never told the family. Heyward never heard her mother mention Robert Bohna.

Instead, the love of her life was Earl Holcomb, who she married in 1944. After a brief honeymoon, he was sent overseas with the U.S. Air Force. He flew a B-17 that he named after his wife: Croix de Suzanne.

Cravens has researched dozens of World War II planes and can't recall a woman with two planes named after her.

"When I tell people about this story," he said, "they all say she must have been quite a woman."

Lang and her husband had moved from California to North Portland a few years ago to be closer to family. Her husband of 70 years lives in a North Portland assisted living center.

"Mom would have been thrilled by this story," Heyward said.

This summer, Heyward and and her husband, Kim flew to a Wisconsin airshow where the plane, newly restored, was unveiled. Cravens said aficionados consider it one of the best restorations in the world.

And here's a strange coda to this tale: Suzanne Norma Lang Holcomb, the woman with two planes named in her honor, never flew on an airplane while alive. But though she died in Oregon, she'd always wanted to be buried next to one of her sons, who died at 17 in a car accident.

So her first time in the air came after death, when the family flew her casket to California to fulfill that wish.

--Tom Hallman Jr.

thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224