Flying Circuses – World War I Nose Art

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, manned flight was still in its infancy, but this would quickly change as military strategists discovered that aircraft made the perfect tool for reconnaissance. Soon it was found that aircraft also made the perfect platform to mount machine guns – the reign of the fighter had begun.

Pilots of the new fighter units were looked upon as knights of the air. In keeping with the idea that air combat was chivalrous, if not deadly, pilots marked their machines with striking paint schemes and personal insignia. The German Jagdstaffeln (fighter units) were some of the first to begin the tradition. In late 1916 and early 1917, British pilots came back from patrols with tales of brightly colored German planes. One of the best known is the all red Fokker triplane of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Von Richthofen’s unit, Jasta 11, became known as the Flying Circus because of its outlandishly painted Fokker and Albatros fighters.

With America’s entry into the Second World War, the rigid regulations that peacetime pilots had lived under were relaxed and nose art quickly began to spring up on aircraft in all theaters of the conflict.

A major inspiration for nose art was pin-up art, especially from the magazine Esquire. George Petty, an Esquire artist, was one of the first to find fame in “girlie art.” A commercial artist by trade, Petty began drawing for Esquire in the late 1930s. His tenure at the magazine was brief, however. Underpaid and overworked, Petty quit Esquire in 1942 to pursue a lucrative advertising career.

Waiting in the wings to take his place was a little known Peruvian artist by the name of Alberto Vargas. Originally hired to duplicate Petty’s work, Vargas, who signed his work with the less ethnic Varga, quickly outperformed his predecessor with stunningly lifelike and seductive paintings of beautiful women. By the end of World War II the pin-up art of Alberto Vargas was rivaling the popularity of the pin-up photos of Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. Pin-up art became so ingrained in the GI lifestyle that Glenn Miller added a song to his repertoire when he toured the war zones, “Peggy the Pin-Up Girl.”

The men that flew and serviced these big planes came from all walks of life, every state in the union, and from every socio-economic background. They were draftees and enlistees there to do a job – win the war. Being so far from home and so removed from the “civilized” world created a climate where nose art flourished. Primarily a morale booster, nose art was also a way for the men to identify and separate themselves from other crews or planes within their unit. In a sense, nose art helped to create camaraderie within crews, and that camaraderie proved beneficial since each crew member depended on the other members for survival.

THE PINUPS OF WWII

Morale-boosting (and sometimes eyebrow-raising) pinup girls — produced both by illustrators' paintbrushes and photographers' cameras — were a poignant symbol of the all-American good life that front-line GIs were fighting for. On one level, the pinup was promoted to encourage heterosexuality among the military. On the human level, they represented home. And where else to start but with Betty Grable. Grable's pictures graced lockers of GIs all around the world during World War II, reminding men what they were fighting for. While pinups have existed for as long as there have been photographs and printing presses, Betty Grable in many ways stands at the beginning of the history of the pinup.

What the guys in combat wanted as a reminder of one of the things they were fighting for — God, country, and family — was the idealized female of their dreams. The pictures, photos, and illustrations of women that they pinned on barracks walls and painted on the noses of their airplanes and bomber jackets served to remind them of the girl back home — or at least the girl they fantasized about. Today, to the small or narrow-minded, it may seem sexist or politically incorrect, but those pictures helped keep airmen focused on the often grotesque job of killing the other guy before he killed them. Looking at pictures of bosomy women with inviting smiles was somehow able to help snap combatants back into a quasi-reality that helped them through the terrors of war and gave them a dangling carrot that empowered them to fight through the sheer Hell of combat to get back home.

The classic pinup genre — cheesecake — fulfills our definition perfectly. Cheesecake (which Webster defines as "photography displaying especially female comeliness and shapeliness") is said to have gotten its name when, in September 1915, a newspaper photographer, George Miller, noticed a visiting Russian diva, Elvira Amaazar, just as she was debarking from her ship in New York. Miller asked the opera signer to hike up her skirt a little for the sake of his picture. Later, the photographer's editor, something of a gourmet, is supposed to have exclaimed, "Why, this is better than cheesecake!" The story, apocryphal or not, dates from an era that saw the birth of an international mode in illustration that still teases the eye, the libido, and the wallet of most men. It continues to thrive in the worlds of entertainment, publishing, and advertising and is used to sell almost everything, from ball bearings to ideas.

The cheesecake image is based on notions of teasing and allure — and frequently humor as well. But other styles of pinups have been used in association with a vast array of emotions, attitudes, pursuits, subjects, mediums: violence, satire, romance, eroticism, purity, fetishism, dance, drama, burlesque, aspiring stardom, sports, cartoons, comic strips, advertisements, domesticity, nature, nationalism, pacifism. Yet overall, erotic fantasy is the key to understanding all styles of the pinup. Although the pinup depends for its success on a sexually evocative image, it should not be confused, for instance, with original nude or erotic art. The pinup is a printed form, intended for general distribution to a large audience. An erotic painting or drawing may be, and often is, reproduced. Many pinups do originate as drawings or paintings — for example, the Gibson Girl, Petty Girl , and Varga Girl - and innumerable calendar subjects. These images are pinups simply because they are intended to be pinups — to be mass produced for the purpose of arousing sexual fantasy.

The classic cheesecake pinup shows a curvy woman, sumptuous breasts exposed (or nearly exposed), posing coquettishly in a predictable, stylized setting — a bedroom, perhaps, or a studio, beach, or theatrical environment. There are in cheesecake endless variations of setting, pose, and anatomical emphasis. Cheesecake is the type of pinup found most frequently in girlie magazines.

It is well recognized that everyone has, and must deal with, erotic fantasies. Although most of these drive from social experiences, especially in childhood, many other stimuli condition our thoughts and feelings. Without question, pinup images are a strong source of erotic fantasy. The submissive poses of George Hurrell's Esquire pinups were tailor-made for bunkside, barracks walls all over the world.

The pinup for its own sake did not begin to emerge until the latter part of the 19th Century. It took two major forms: magazine photographs of renowned, even notorious actresses and dancing girls; and the Gibson Girl, who represented the first conscious effort to create a popular ideal of femininity. Thus, even in the early period, one discerns different social levels of pinups. The Gibson Girl at the turn of the century was the world's image of the American beauty. Although she had universal appeal, she was distinctly "high class". She was a status symbol for the masses.

Over the years as we have seen, girlie magazines took on various guises — "studio" photography, burlesque, theater — in order to present pinups. Only by exception in the first thirty years of the 20th Century, were any of these magazines not aimed at a mass audience on the lowest socio-economic levels. Not until Esquire began (1933) was the pinup aimed exclusively at readers of a higher social status. Esquire featured, from the start, articles and pictorials in the finest tradition of literary and esthetic magazines. Its pinups by Petty, Vargas, and other artists maintained the aura of "good taste." The pinups, many of which were two- and three-page foldouts, showed comic, sex-oriented situations reflecting the sophistication of the urban upper classes. Photographer George Hurrell also contributed heavily to the WW II pinup mill that Esquire was the foundation of, with color portraits of Hollywood starlets, many in "ready-to-ravish" poses (a la a young Judy Garland).

During World War II, painted pinups first emerged from the fine airbrushed art of Alberto Vargas, whose images were the most sought-after section of Esquire. With thousands of airplanes droning off to war, nose art emerged as the aviator's unique calling card.

Although the Army Air Force attempted to ban and censor nose art on several occasions, ultimately, the art would remain. Its value in terms of morale was unquestioned. It would be an understatement to call most of the clothing on pinup girls (as they were called) "painted on." Most examples show all too well that the clothing was not meant to hide very much at all.

Many aircrews even paid their artists to make sure that even this little bit of clothing was removed. Some planes were even named accordingly, "O-O Nothing!", "Off We Go", "Surprise Attack", "Over Exposed", "Tantalizing Takeoff", and dozens of others were popular double-entendres. Hedy Lamarr, one of Hollywood's prettiest stars, found herself memorialized on many a warbird.

Some poster art of the era used pinup-inspired imagery of women, often in military clothes. This type of art was most often used for War Bond drives and morale boosters on the home front. Industry often played a part, putting up posters in company cafeterias and at the clock where you got your card punched at the beginning and end of each day.

The Pacific War against Japan involved long-range missions and hours of miserable heat, rain, and mud. The Hawaiian pinup, complete with a lei, could only serve to remind the airmen and ground crews of their time back east.

The "girl next door" look was always popular, even if, well ... she wasn't quite the girl who lived next door. Pinup artists of the day always tried to capture that innocent look, even if the clothes and pose were anything but.

A few of the pinups were so sexy and provocative that they could only be called bombshells. Some were Hollywood starlets, some were imaginary. Almost all of them were proportioned beyond mere genetics.

It was no mystery why this artwork ended up in dozens of variations on so many airplanes. It reminded the airmen of home and of better times. And in a day when death could be just hours away, it gave them something else to think about.

The finest pinups were torn from the pages of Esquire magazine. Each was published with a poem by Phil Stack. These poems were designed to rhyme and present without much subtlety, again using the double-entendre to effect. One went simply, "I'm learning some commando tricks. For keeping fit, they're dandy, And when you men come home again, They're apt to come in handy!"

If anything, the pinups that inspired a generation of soldiers, sailors, and airmen were quite practical. Some were exotic, to be sure, but virtually all were posed in positions that seemed quite acceptable to the gentleman's view of the era. Most were women who you could go home to, if you lived to go home at all. And that is why they formed such a central place at the frontlines of the air war. They represented hope and home. "Good luck, chum", they would whisper, "my dreams are riding with you". And they were everywhere: writing kits, matchbooks, blotters, calendars, playing cards, arcade cards, in the pages of YANK, on Christmas cards, postcards, and just about anything that you could print on.

In the end, the pinup emerged as a defining element of the era, gracing everything from the noses of airplanes, to leather jackets, to the walls of barracks huts and O-Clubs across Europe and the Pacific.