Hello collectors,

I was always a big fan of pin up art. As a kid growing up, my pop use to take me to air shows and I always enjoyed seeing the lovely ladies painted on the side of these magnificent war birds. I did a little search on the net and thought I would share what I found. Enjoy the pictures.

Rich

Some more Art.

NICE!!!


Heres a few classics!

These are great photos Rich! speculation surrounds the "Hells Angels" Motorcycle club as it was possibly formed from the bomber group name that served in WW2. as some of its members served in this bomber group. I like the Betty Boop photo the best as I thought she had black hair! Cool photos. Thanks for posting! Larry

Great thread.
Any idea if German's had anything like this going on in WWII?
What would you suppose the value is on one of these actual pieces?

Dean,

Some German fighters had cartoon characters as I recall and some had playing card symbols and other characters as I recall. I do not remember seeing bombers with what we call "nose art". But they never had the immense fleets of heavy bombers either.

Value? 99% or more perished when the bombers were decommissioned and broken up. The few that survived have been redone many times. An original, un-restored piece? Mucho Dinero

Have always loved the practice of nose art on military aircraft and these photos are a real treat to see. As Dave said, it's likely many such pieces were destroyed - either through war or scrapping. Quite a shame.

However, Greg Hildebrandt, a renown American artist, has done some recent commissioned nose art babes on restored warplanes.



Greg has painted four planes so far. Here's some links to his work and information about each plane project:

http://www.spiderwebart.com/productsd.asp?snob=108919 - 1945 Bearcat

http://www.spiderwebart.com/productsd.asp?snob=108594 - 1943 P-38 Lightning

http://www.spiderwebart.com/productsd.asp?snob=109245 - 1944 B-25 Bomber

http://www.spiderwebart.com/productsd.asp?snob=109412 - WWII Tiger Cat

ETA: You can also see video of Greg actually painting some of the planes on his YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/user/SpiderwebartGallery

Great to see this tradition being kept alive!

T.

Bombers of today have some impressive nose art, though they have drifted away from the scantily clad female designs out of PC considerations.

http://tinyurl.com/amvnqgb

Germans almost exclusively confined their art to unit patches, some cartoon characters as noted, playing cards and other conventional adornments.
Its hard to escape the impression that they considered painting up their aircraft with half naked babes somewhat crude, and in any case, wouldn't want to give the impression of following the lead of US aircraft crews.

Great posting...Should any of you be lucky enough to visit our capital in Ottawa, and more specifically the new Canadian War museum, there is a outstanding display of original, WW2 untouched Bomber nose art hanging on the wall. The bomber sections were cut mostly from Wellington and Halifax heavy bombers serving in the RCAF and were rescued from the scrapper's torch. I believe that the person was a war correspondant who visited many of the surplus plane scrapping yeards in Europe and picked out 17 or so of what he thought were the most interesting examples of nose art. They were cut from the planes by the scrappers and he had the pieces sent back to Canada. Later his family donated the sections to the museum. They are very large and nice and some have rivit sections and actual perplex windows...cheers, Ryan

Rich,

Thanks for kicking off this great visual thread - who can resist looking at these killer pin-up girls? Some of the newer ones are exceptional too, but one doesn't get to see much of this type of work on modern aircraft, though, I did find a couple interesting images that I'll add. I think by far the WWII American flyers had the best nose-art going. Who could ever forget the curvaceous "Memphis Belle" and her brave crew?

In general the Luftwaffe didn't have much in the way of luscious ladies, but they also had some bold, very distinctive, colorful nose-art decorating their machines. On page xii of Tom Wittmann's Luftwaffe book, there's an excellent example of an entire skull that drapes the nose of an early WWI, German bomber. Another memorable example of some larger, German airplane art is the famous wasp design that accented the noses of the ME 110's of, Zerst�rergeschwader 1. The 110's also sported a shark-mouth, much like the P-40 Warhawks used in the Pacific Theatre.

As mentioned, the Luftwaffe employed a more traditional, European style - shields, crests, animals and other figures to distinguish their aircraft. What the illustrations lack in comparable size to the US paintings, they make up for in variety. The distinctive "R" monogram of the Richthofen Jagdgeschwader, Udet's little dragon/Tatzelwurm, M�lder's falcon's head and Nowotny's Green-heart squadron, are just a few examples. The list goes on ...

A most enjoyable thread, thanks again fellas!

Bill

2/3

3/3

This is probably the holy grail of WW2 bomber art, B-24J "THE DRAGON AND HIS TAIL".





Pics of the original bomber are elusive, any color ones found are bound to be the Collings Foundation copy that they flew for a few years, until repainting it. I seriously doubt if any color pics of the original exist.
It was deployed to the PTO, where it suffered a blown tire and wrecked at the side of the runway on the island of Le Shima.
Some say it was scrapped there, others say it was repaired, flown back to the states, and eventually chewed up for scrap at Davis-Mothan.
I think the latter version is true, I recall a book [that I still have somewhere] called "Desert Boneyard", about Davis Mothan. At least 20 years old, it was loaded with pics, and I'm pretty sure one of them was this bomber on its death bed waiting to meet the scrapper.
This enginless pic was likely from the same era, and [probably] taken at the boneyard. Might just be the one in my book, going to have to dig it up and see.

Just went today to see the bombers from the Collings foundation B-17, B-24, and a mustang. Alway fun to walk thru them and think of the B+lls they had flying in them.

Ok I found that book, "Desert Boneyard" [1st one], and the Dragon B-24 is not in it ,,, But I know I saw a pic of it waiting to be scrapped somewhere, maybe in Air Classics or something.
Not much from WW2 in the book, BocksCar, B-29 which dropped the 2nd Abomb, was there for a while but got rescued before scrapping.
I'm on a Boneyard kick, I just ordered 2 more, "AMARG: America's Military Aircraft Boneyard - A Photo Scrapbook " and "50 Years of the Desert Boneyard: Davis Monthan A.F.B. Arizona".