WW II Military Aircraft Nose Art

[ismnotwasm]

What bothers me about this-- besides the obvious--is how many of the planes must have went down. Painting a sexualized woman on the nose on a War plane is disturbing when one thinks of the many potential implications.

Its also heartbreakingly sad.

Nose art is a decorative painting or design on the fuselage of a military aircraft, usually chalked up on the front fuselage, and is a form of aircraft graffiti. Although wildly painted squadron insignia was common in World War I, true nose art did not occur until the Second World War. At the beginning of World War II, before the idea of painting an image on the skin of a plane arose, crews of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) pasted pages from Esquire Magazine, Men Only, and Look magazine on the nose section, fuselage, and tail sections of the B-17 bombers known as Flying Fortresses. By the end of the war, there was such a demand for artists, who received up to $15.00 per aircraft, that nose art could be called an industry

http://www.vintag.es/2014/03/ww-ii-military-aircraft-nose-art.html