Naval aviation special markings and nose art is a field that has been largely ignored, primarily due to the lack of coverage in mainstream aviation history publications. Research into archives, feedback from veterans, and personal photographs by the authors, Jim Meehan and William Tate, have documented thousands of previously unknown individual aircraft with these markings. Paint Locker Magic: A History of Naval Aviation Special Markings and Artwork covers markings on US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard aircraft over the 100 year history of US naval aviation. This fascinating and visually resplendent book includes illustrations of special markings and nose art on early canvas-covered airplanes through the World War 2 era when nose art flourished and on into the jet age, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, and up to the present war on terror with aircraft marked to commemorate the 9-11 terrorist attacks. This coverage includes fighters and attack aircraft of the carrier navy and the patrol aircraft, transports blimps, research and test aircraft and helicopters. Markings include personal nose art and pinups, shark mouth and similar markings, cartoons depicting special missions, Christmas and similar markings and tributes.
William Albert Tate served in Bomber Command from 1938 to 1946. He passed away in 2007, at the age of eighty-five. This is the first time that his memoirs have been published.
"Unless you are around military aircraft a lot you may have never noticed that naval aircraft seem to have fewer decorations than those of other services—and not just recently. Why? US naval aviation has been around for over 100 years so this can’t be coincidence. Both authors have been around aircraft for a long time and apparently pondered this very question for a long time...There are lots of books about nose art—this one takes a completely unexpected tack."
~SpeedReaders.info
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.