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I got a wonderful surprise in my email from Cousin Ed, it was the information about some of my Dad’s Nose Art. My Dad wrote on the back of each of the pictures to tell us what they were. My oldest thought my Dad’s handwriting is like mine and they are similar. What really gets me is we do our Ts the same, you know the two styles, one crossed and the other like a check mark. Ts in the middle are crossed and t as the end of a word is like a check mark.
I think I mentioned most Nose Art artists are anonymous unless they were famous before they went into the Air Force, Dad was never credited for his. So now I can notify all the Jolly Rogers websites that he is the artist. These are the pictures I got and my Dad’s descriptions.
It looks like Booby Trap 44-40193 survived or was not part of the 90th if lost. She was painted for the 321st Squadron, “Bombs Away”.
This is an A20 mid-range bomber used to ferry food and booze from Australia to the Jolly Roger’s base in New Guinea. They did a nice job of upgrading her without messing up the paint job.
When Bob Hope visited it was a big deal and one of the B24s was painted in his honor. These pictures are from my Dad’s collection, although there is supposed to be newsreel footage of the plane.
It looks like Road To Tokyo survived the war to be salvaged. Think that might be my Dad in the back next to the R in Road.
He was also scheduled to paint the B-25 Mitchell bomber (APO 920) that was the first USAAF bomber to land in the Philippines but it went down before the nose art was finished. The B-25 was used in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and were launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet. Also known as the B-25 Mitchell named for Billy Mitchell.
I know nothing about this plane or what became of it, may be later. Pretty sure that is Dad looking at his handy work.
Nose art is a decorative painting or design on the fuselage of an aircraft, usually on the front fuselage.
While begun for practical reasons of identifying friendly units, the practice evolved to express the individuality often constrained by the uniformity of the military, to evoke memories of home and peacetime life, and as a kind of psychological protection against the stresses of war and the probability of death. The appeal, in part, came from nose art not being officially approved, even when the regulations against it were not enforced
Because of its individual and unofficial nature, it is considered folk art, inseparable from work as well as representative of a group It can also be compared to sophisticated graffiti. In both cases, the artist is often anonymous, and the art itself is ephemeral. In addition, it relies on materials immediately available.
Contemporary research demonstrates that bomber crews, which suffered high casualty rates during World War II, often developed strong bonds with the planes they were flying, and affectionately decorated them with nose art. It was also believed by the flight crews that the nose art was bringing luck to the planes.
I don’t know if he did more planes. Ed has a bunch of letters Dad sent back when he was in New Guinea, those will be coming along when Ed has time to find them. I am looking forward obviously. When I started this last December I had no idea what or who I would find, or for that matter how much. The first thing I thought about doing is writing him a proper obituary, the 2” one he got just wasn’t enough for the life he led. Even here writing about the journey, I wasn’t sure if there would be enough information to make a book of any consequence. Now it seems I will be able to reconstruct much of my Dad’s life thru historical records and personal writings so an eBook may be in my future after all.