Top 10 Aircraft Nose Art

A Bit O' Lace

Flak Bait

Glamorous Glennis

Scat (Robin Olds)

 Saw it in one of those 'one off' mags about WWII a/c.....picture of a 'squadron hack' Liberator....nose art was a guy bandaged like a mummy (with bullet holes!) wheeling his wheelchair....fast. The words were:

 "We'll Be Back!!! "

 You can take that a couple ways.

 (I say the a/c was a squadron hack because that was what the caption said....I have no way of knowing for sure)

 Nam 

Betty Lou's Buggy

Here is a website:

http://www.acepilots.com/planes/nose_art.html

PaPa-John

How about:

Air-A-Cutie

Big Beautiful Doll

Shangri-La

Gordon D. King wrote:

Miss Behavin' Pist'l Packin Mama Executive Sweet Passion Wagon The top one to me is the Flying Tigers

well i was looking more for specific aircraft rather than squadrons but i'll deffinately make an exception here

PaPa-John wrote:

Betty Lou's Buggy Here is a website: http://www.acepilots.com/planes/nose_art.html   PaPa-John

Sweet website.

Roy

How about "Old Crow"  and "Lil' Thumper" (my Pop's B-25D he flew in New Guinea)

Zip

My vote for one goes to the B-17G "Aluminum Overcast" - what a gal!  And don't forget "Hustlin' Hussy" from the Revellogram P-61 kit (don't know if this one is real or not!)

Brian  

P-47M Lanowski with 56th FG

Halifax . Vicky

B17 Chow-hound.

Daywalker wrote:

How about: Air-A-Cutie Big Beautiful Doll Shangri-La

...how about: Eight Ball and Hail Columbia from the first Ploesti Missions? And then there was Ruptured Duck on the Tokyo Raid...

I appreciate that this is slightly OT, but you cant not admire some of the formation ships used in WW2, "Little Gramper" in particular coming to mind;

I cant find any coulour pics to show here, I first spotted this liberator in a coloured illustration in "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft", here is an artists impression of it;

Some good ones not to be missed:

Miss Pussy Galore

Flak Alley

Strawberry female dog

Embraceable You

Thunder Bird

Morphine Sue

Chautaugua

Uncle Ho's Nightmare

and many, many others......

                                               Andrew

What the......

I did not type  Strawberry "female dog", I typed Strawberry b-i-t -c-h. Has the world gone so PC that I can't make a post about a historically significant air craft without the name being destroyed by some automated censor machine? Not to mention that the kit is on the shelf of every LHS in the country in plain view of every 5yo that walks by and no one bats an eye. No change to Miss Pussy Galore I noticed, go figure. Let's all get over it.

                                               Andrew

navypitsnipe wrote:

thought of this as opposed to top 10 tv aircraft.  1. Memphis Bell  2. Sentimental Journey  3. Dragon and his tail (or Witchcraft, or All-American, whichever you prefer)  4. Enola Gay  5. Bock's Car anybody got anymore?

The Dragon's Tail b-24 is high on my list as well as Strawberry female dog over at Wright Patterson.

gary

Don't forget Aluminum Overcast.

OK, I'm gonna throw out some modern day ones that are still cool as ice...

Iowa Air National Guard KC-135 with the 185th ARF [they do a lot of nose art on their tankers]

And one out of I believe Kansas 

And my favorite nose art, the !C-130 Spectre

Too Big and Too Heavy/Short Snorter... still my fav. (Even if this render shows it as a "D." *sheesh*)

A bit O lace  Mitlon Caniff's artwork  B17

Big @ss Bird B17 

Two omissions that come to mind 

I'd have to say pretty much any single nose art on an P-61 Black Widow.  have you seen the artwork on those????  I don't think I could even look at one without blushing until I was in my 20s!

This is my favotite mainly because I know the guy who flew it. Joe Mc Connell is a friend and fellow musician who flew this bird (well, the real one) out of the PHILLIPINES in the 823rd sq. of the 38bg during the last months of the war. Prior to piloting this B-25 he flew right seat in an earlier modified glass nose version.

When on bomb runs Joe was responsible for releasing the bombs. He recounts on his first mission ,while attacking a JAPANESE train, the pilot gave the bomb drop command and after flying over they didn't see any explosins. That's when Joe realized that ,in his excitement, he'd forgotten to open the bomb bay. He said "there went a bunch of guys that lived for another day."

I asked Joe if he ever flew again and he said that after the war he never flew a plane and didn't ever think about it again until I started asking him questions about his war experiences. I eventually asked him if he'd like for me to build his plane,which stoked him, and he loaned me an old photo album with pics of his plane "SWEET SUE" (named after his sweetheart and wife Susan) plus his squadron mates and other planes in the unit.

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I tried to get the Monogram model as close to what I could see in the photos and there's some questions about some of the markins  eg. the squadron color and serial #. I do know that the tiger head and the planes name are accurate. These were hand painted onto decal film and applied accordingly.

Joe may have confused his earlier B-25 assignment with this plane since the serial number indicates an earlier year for when a B-25 J would have been built. I'm not certain. He liked it and that's what was most important for me.

I built this model in the early '90's and Joe's had it since so, if anyone's got a problem with detail accuracy- well, it's to late for me to fix it now. I will note the comments for the future if I ever do this subject again.

Joe and Susan live happily on a farm in MANSFIELD Pennsylvania.

Joe's plane is not famous like all of the so very well known bombers that we've seen for almost ever but it's no less important.

echolmberg wrote:

I'd have to say pretty much any single nose art on an P-61 Black Widow.  have you seen the artwork on those????  I don't think I could even look at one without blushing until I was in my 20s!