Nose Art – An Examination – Hangar Thirteen

One of the facets of Second World War aviation that seem to fascinate the public the most is the phenomenon of nose-art. Unlike simple unit badges and mascots, the practice of adorning military aircraft with artwork evolved into something larger during the war. While several nations flirted with the concept, none embraced it as wholeheartedly as the United States. Perhaps this is appropriate, the US political and social tradition celebrating individualism, even when supposedly trained in military group-think. Pieces of military equipment have been decorated and named since the dawn of history but never before had military artwork been so prominent.

Of course, there is a tendency for to overplay its practice in popular memory. In fact, in the absence of a talented artist, many (if not most) wartime nose-art examples were downright crude. Still, it would be wrong to say that these artworks were not cherished. It is human-nature to form emotional bonds with inanimate objects when they play an important part of your daily life. If your life is to be entrusted to a machine, the care you show it can hardly be less important than that which you give yourself. The ultimate result is the object often takes on a personality of its own, its legacy often outliving the men who serviced it.

Take the B-17F Memphis Belle (41-24485, 91BG) for example - perhaps the most famous aircraft in military history.

When Warner Bros. decided to produce a film on the US bombing offensive in 1990, they originally optioned a script titled Southern Belle. However, when they received permission from the William Wyler estate (he directed the 1944 documentary) and the Belle's surviving crewmen, they quickly adapted the script to use the original name and artwork. They changed little else. Why? Because the airplane was more recognizable than the crew who flew her. This is not a criticism of the film. Rather, it is a point on just how indelible an image the bomber left upon our social consciousness. Warner Bros. understood that, right or wrong, the legacy of the aircraft was greater than that of its crew. John Milius's film Rough Riders (1997), which covers the US invasion of Cuba during the Spanish-American War, ends with this quote from Teddy Roosevelt regarding the significance of San Juan Hill:

Will you be so kind, Mr Crane, with your camera, to take a picture of this regiment on this glorious hill, for we will always live in its shadow.

It is powerful quote precisely because it is true. While the Spanish-American War is one of the most little known historical events among the contemporary American public, the name San Juan Hill remains intimately associated with Roosevelt's "Rough Riders."

Memphis Belle's story is hardly different. Pilot Robert K. Morgan had intended to name the bomber after girlfriend Margaret Polk of Memphis, Tennessee, the original name being Little One. The name Memphis Belle came from a John Wayne movie, Lady for a Night (1942), which featured the lead character (named Morgan) captaining a riverboat named Memphis Belle. Paired with a George Petty pinup that was featured in the April 1942 issue of Esquire magazine, the name and artwork became one of the most recognizable images in military history. Morgan and the others of Belle's crew lived the rest of their lives in the bomber's shadow - appropriate, because she brought them home.

Still, there are issues.

First comes with the artwork itself: not only was it generally crude, it was often vulgar. While it is natural for a people to take pride in their fighting men, somehow the fact that these men were young men is often forgotten. Said fact comes with a lot of baggage.

Pornography had been such an issue during the American Civil War that Congress banned its posting through the mail, and activist Anthony Comstock's New York Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully oversaw federal legislation that allowed the post office to deny postage to any periodical failing to meet decency standards. Critics of the Comstock Laws have long maintained that such a standard is too fluid to enforce, generally pointing to the efforts of Postmaster General Frank Comerford Walker to use them against Esquire magazine in the 1940s. Esquire had long peppered its articles with adult humor and girly artwork - first by artist George Petty, then by Alberto Vargas - and wartime demand for the latter resulted in the magazine dedicating entire sections of each issue to pin-ups. The post office fought a running battle against the magazine, with lawsuits, countersuits, and appeals stretching the controversy from 13 September 1943 to 4 February 1946. Advocates on each side reached the extremes, with the magazine's critics appearing embarrassingly out of touch as a result. This, along with the fact that the magazine was, aside from the occasional pinup and humor page, a serious periodical, tilted the courts in Esquire's favor. Naturally, it was this same legal logic that allowed a former employee of Esquire to start Playboy magazine in 1953.

Aside from simple printed names, the overwhelming majority of nose-art in the Second World War came from Esquire pinups and pinup calendars by similar artists. In general, commanders tolerated the practice in balance with popular scrutiny: the farther from prying eyes, the more lewd the artwork. When Adjutant General MG James A. Ulio brought the issue to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in December 1942, Stimson approved the practice, with the Army moderating the nose-art under Regulation 35-22 in August 1944. Still, public reaction to seeing such decorated aircraft was mixed: first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was aghast and Charles Lindbergh wrote he found it "nauseating." By contrast, when King Gustav V of Sweden inspected the interned Consolidated B-24H Near Sighted Robin (41-28851, 34BG) - whose artwork showed a cross-eyed bird tugging on a woman's nipple - the Swedish monarch howled with laughter.

As time goes by the culture of the past becomes more distant and alien. Acknowledging this, I thought it might be nice to go over some of the more popular nose-art subjects from the war and examine their origins.

Usually paired with some variant of Sleepy Time Gal, Night Mission, or Sack Time, this Vargas pinup of a yawning girl was first published in the April 1944 issue of Esquire magazine. The caption read:

The American gal is a peach of a pal to the boys who are guarding our nation. She girds for the fight by yawn's early light and her war job is done with elation! She always responds when asked to buy bonds - no critic can label her lightly. And because it's in style to conserve with a smile, she's conserving by day and by nighty!

This particular example, Consolidated B-24J 42-99813, served with the 464BG of the Fifteenth Air Force and was interned in neutral Switzerland on 19 July 1944 following a strike on Munich, Germany.

Intimately associated with actress Anna May Wong, the term Dragon Lady actually originated with the Milton Caniff comic series “Terry and the Pirates” which ran from 1934 to 1973 in the Chicago Tribune. An adventure comic, the series follows a pair of friends who travel to China in search of adventure, fighting in World War Two and later becoming government agents. The "Dragon Lady" - the series' villain - was based on a real life Chinese pirate, Lai Choi San (Mountain of Wealth), who earned some notoriety for her small junk fleet in the 1920s. The series reflected real life during the war, with the titular Terry becoming a pilot with China's American Volunteer Group (the "Flying Tigers") and the Dragon Lady taking part in the Chinese resistance.

The series inspired numerous movie serial adaptions which, due to the anti-miscegenation statutes of the Hollywood Hay's Code, all featured white actors in Chinese garb. A racier version of the comic was syndicated for the armed forces in Stars & Stripes, who adored the vampish Dragon Lady and Terry's gigantic sidekick, Big Stoop (Big Stoop, it might be noted, was also a common aircraft name). Now considered a racial epitaph, the Dragon Lady was nevertheless a significant early Asian sex symbol.

This particular example, Consolidated B-24J 44-40670, served with the 11BG of the Seventh Air Force and was based on Okinawa.

A name generally reserved for larger aircraft, Mr. Five By Five was in fact a song made famous by the Freddie Slack Orchestra in 1942, featuring Ella Mae Morse on vocals. Referencing a man who is "five feet tall" and "five feet wide," the song is a thinly-veiled tribute to Jimmy Rushing, lead-vocalist for the Count Basie Orchestra.

Mister Five by Five
He's five feet tall and he's five feet wide
He don't measure no more from head to toe
Than he do from side to side

That man
Can really jump it for a fat man
The only trouble is there's no way of knowin'
Whether he's comin' or goin'

This example, Boeing B-17F 42-29955, served with the 303BG of the Eighth Air Force and was lost on a strike against Bremen, Germany on 26 November 1943. There were no survivors.

One of the most important events in music history began on 31 July 1942 when the American Federation of Musicians opened a two year strike which prohibited new recordings using union musicians. At a time when musicians were already in short supply due to the draft, popular music in the 1940s could only be recorded by having record companies exploit loopholes: releasing previously unused material, recording songs acapella (without musicians), or recording non-union musicians. The ultimate result was the death of swing music as a profitable genre, with doo-wop, country, and blues slowly taking its place.

"Pistol Packin' Mama" is an example of this. Written by Al Dexter & his Troopers to the tune of "Boil Them Cabbage Down" in 1942, "Pistol Packin' Mama" was in fact a country song whose success saw it become an early crossover hit. It reached number one on the Billboard charts in October 1943, taking the spot formally held by Bing Crosby's acapella "Sunday, Monday (Or Always)." The song relates an angry wife confronting her husband for his drunken carousing. Due to a former ban on American pop music, the song was particularly popular in Italy following its surrender.

The aircraft shown here, Boeing B-17F 42-30609, served with the 95BG of the Eighth Air Force and was lost over Brunswick, Germany on 10 February 1944.

Few women commanded as much attention during the war as Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr first came to global acclaim in 1933 for the erotic film Ecstasy where, as the sexually frustrated wife of an older man, Lamarr was shown nude and, in close-up, in the thralls of orgasm. Success allowed her and her family to flee Austria following German expansion and Hollywood was quick to make use of this European 'sex-bomb.' Of her racy Hollywood roles, none were as successful as the character of Tondelayo in the 1942 film White Cargo. Based on the 1912 book Hell's Playground by primate researcher Ida Vera Simonton, the tale was originally a warning against the corruptible nature of African imperialism. The character of Tondelayo was a personification of this, Lamarr's role being that of a corruptive influence whose sex appeal overshadows her lack of morality. When a new employee arrives to work at an imperial rubber plantation, he ignores the old hands' advice to stay away from Tondelayo, ruining the man's life to the extent that he has to be shipped home as "white cargo." In the novel, Tondelayo is black, but to prevent breaking Hollywood Hays code miscegenation standards, Tondelayo in the film is described as 'half-Arab, half-Egyptian.'

This example, North American B-25D 41-30669, served with the 345BG of the Fifth Air Force in the South Pacific. Her nose art is based on the Vargas pinup in the June 1943 issue of Esquire, which read:

This June I would have married
but an ocean stepped between,
I hope no sultry so-and-so
Has landed my Marine!

Lady Be Good! was originally a 1924 Broadway musical with numbers written by George Gershwin. The title song was more popular than the production and it was optioned by MGM for a musical film in 1941. Starring Eddie Crane and Dixie Donegan, the film is not particularly complex, the plot concerning a married couple who produce successful musicals together but cannot get along in private. In reality, it was a showcase for various Busby Berkeley-directed dance numbers, including one memorable sequence where Eleanor Powell tap danced with a dog to the title song.

The lyrics to the song "Lady Be Good" require some consideration. The lyrics concern a man out on the town seeking female companionship. Hardly a song could be more appropriate for servicemen stationed overseas.

The aircraft shown here, Boeing B-29 42-65227, served with the 468BG of the Twentieth Air Force in the Pacific. The B-29 was regarded by CG USAAF GEN Henry H. Arnold as "a cut above the ordinary airplane" and, as such, was subjected to rather harsh enforcement of nose-art regulation. One attempt at this was the use of nose-art templates, as the 468BG's shooting star template can be seen here.

The pinup comes from artist Gil Elvgren, an artist for the Louis F. Dow calendar company. While by no means as successful as Vargas and Petty, Elvgren found a niche by producing a series of 'Military Pin-Up Kits' - small packages containing a dozen pinups each, pre-sealed for mailing overseas - alongside fellow artist Earl Moran. This piece, titled "Weight Control" originated with one such kit.

Hell's Angels was a massively successful aviation film released in 1930. Originally intended as a silent picture, the film was haphazardly altered to incorporate sound while still in production. Financed by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, Hell's Angels took some three years to complete, much of the tardiness being due to Hughes's tight management. The story follows a pair of British siblings who fight in the Great War as pilots with the Royal Flying Corps. The aerial sequences of the film remain unmatched to this day, though the breakthrough performance of actress Jean Harlow is probably better recognized outside of aviation circles.

Today the name is most often associated with the Hells Angels motorcycle club. The group has never been clear as to the exact origins of where they took the name, as conflicting sources credit two separate inspirations. The first was No. 3 Squadron of China's American Volunteer Group. Known as the "Flying Tigers," the AVG was a unit created to provide American support for the Chinese while the United States remained neutral, allowing the Chinese to purchase American equipment and recruit American pilots outside of official channels. The AVG's third squadron was known as "Hell's Angels," adopting a sexy demon as their logo. The other possible origin was the 303BG of the US Eighth Air Force in Great Britain. The group adopted the name following the exploits of Boeing B-17F 41-24577, whose crew became the first in the 8AF to complete a combat tour of 25 missions on 14 May 1943. The bomber stayed behind, flying a total of 48 missions before being retired and returned to the US for a war bond tour on 20 January 1944. Her ground crew are shown here posing with the bomber.

The effect of the aforementioned AFM strike can hardly be overstated in the shaping of American culture in the 20th Century. The Mills Brothers, for example, previously billed as a novelty act for being little more than 'four vocalists with a single guitar,' suddenly became typical of musical acts during the war years. Originally written in 1915 but shelved after the publisher failed to find a market for it, "Paper Doll" was recorded by the Mills Brothers in 1942 as a B-side for the single, "I'll Be Around." The B-side proved the greater hit, reaching Billboard no. 1 in November 1943 and staying there through the following January. Already known as the first black Americans to have their own radio show in 1930, the success of "Paper Doll" was such that they were also the first black Americans to top the Billboard charts in record sales.

This example, North American B-25J 43-27473, served with the 321BG of the Twelfth Air Force in the Mediterranean. The pin-up was taken from the December 1943 issue of Esquire magazine and was titled "There'll Always Be A Christmas."

As anyone who has served in the military can attest, the service has its own vocabulary - and it is usually not pleasant. Famed correspondent Ernie Pyle famously bemoaned “If I ever have to hear the [fuck] word again I’m going to throw up.” Ever conscious of how the homefront might react, it is remarkable that such profanity rarely found itself in the artwork applied to combat aircraft. The military's affinity for acronyms certainly helped here, with slang terms like "SNAFU - Situation Normal, All Fucked Up," "FUBAR - Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition," and "FUJIMO - Fuck You, Jack, I Have My Orders" all being common in nose-art. Even the nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki was adorned with such an acronym: "JANCFU - Joint Army-Navy-Civilian Fuck Up."

One of the more common and less offensive acronyms were the letters "BTO" for "Big Time Operator." A variant of the term "Smooth Operator" from the turn-of-the-century for someone exceptionally skilled (usually in reference to seduction), "Big Time Operator" takes this definition to the next level. In essence, a "Big Time Operator" is someone of extravagant taste and style, almost comically so. Naturally, a common companion was artwork featuring wolves (a slang term for sex-starved men) and zoot-suits.

Zoot-suits were a product of black jazz culture in the 1930s, adopting the once humorous depiction of over-sized clothing into a point of pride. By the outbreak of the war, their influence could be seen in everyday American culture, with pleated pants and double-breasted suits being common place. Of course, true zoot-suits were more extravagant, usually being brightly colored and paired with gold jewelry and platform shoes. Today this clothing is best remembered for its role in the Zoot Suit Riots, which occurred throughout 3-8 June 1943. Flaunting rationing policies which called for clothing makers to redesign their products to save cloth (removing the previously noted trends), the mostly illegal immigrants of the Latin community in Los Angeles were renown for their pachuco culture, which included a fondness for zoot suits. Thuggish and constantly clashing with the rising influx of US Navy servicemen, the heavily-publicized trial of twelve pachucos over the murder of Jose Diaz that year resulted in tensions boiling over, with mobs descending on anyone dressed in zoot-suits throughout the city.

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Nose Art – An Examination