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So the use of characters by Disney and by others

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was a wonderful means to portray things on these airframes. B-17s, for example, there were more than 12,000 made

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almost 17,000 B-24s, and then the fighters had nose art on them as well.

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So we have an example here, Thumper, a cartoon character that was put on the airplane again a different kind of airplane that what we talked about before.

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But nonetheless, the same kind of thing. This was the crew's identity for the airplane to help them

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live and fly missions together.

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I mean you can see the origins of this where they were either in cartoons or maybe in movies.

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Someone from the crew or maybe one of the

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either the ground crew or the air crew who had seen the movie and thought

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"Hey, this will be a cool symbol to have on the airplane." And I'm sure the crew went through a very similar process

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They chose that cartoon character

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either did it themselves the artwork where they have someone paint it for them.

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This one here has the Flying Tiger which was symbolic of the unit called the Flying Tigers

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the circle insignia here was representative of nationalist China and then this shows the tiger with the

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torn up Japanese flag there. Of course. This was during World War two and the Pacific Theater

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But that P-47 is a great example of an airplane that flew air-to-air missions air-to-ground missions

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in both the European and Pacific theater.

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So yes, it has the derivative of Dumbo on there. Another great example of nose art that we have here in the museum.

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We have the "command decision" nose art, which is really just behind me and has Disney characters on it.

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But it's not just what you find on airplanes. It's also in patches that air crews wear

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Or in might maintainers might wear. Disney artwork shows up on these patches and insignia. And during World War II,

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there was well a thousand of these that Disney nose art appeared on as well as thousands of airplanes.

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We even have leather jackets on display from aircrew that have the artwork painted on the back of the jacket.

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We have two missions here. One is to tell the Air Force story to the public. The other is to inspire our young people.

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So we tell it as it was

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We don't revise how it was done or change anything. We just portray it accurately.

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And so the young people can understand that as well, because some of them will be airmen of the future.