The painting art of US aircraft and censorship?

[GuerraCivil]

During the WW2 the US air units painted in my opinion the most colourful and also the most daring noseart in their planes. The US-aircraft noseart represented many nude well-shaped female characters - they seem to have been much more common in the US aircraft than in the aircraft of any other air forces during the WW2.

I wonder how the wartime censorship reacted to the noseart representing nude beuaties - was it retouched away or avoided in the official wartime photos/films intended for the audience back at home? Was there at any point restrictions or "recommendations" to limit/guide the artistic expression of the paint-artists of US air units?

I wonder also if the enemy side made any notion of the nude beauties when/if they found shot-down US aircraft wrecks with these paintings? At least they would have been unique trophies to be cut from the wreck and might have raised certain interest or amusement...

[Bruce Dennis]

The American nose-art was well documented, but as an aside, there are several examples of V-2 rockets decorated with near pornographic images.

Bruce

[GuerraCivil]

The decoration art of V-2 rockets disappeared once the rockets were sent to their mission and exploded (one must really ask why they bothered to paint them at all!) The well-documented noseart of the US aircraft was more permanent and far more interesting phenomenon.

The US aircraft noseart was also sometimes clearly erotic (religious conservatives and some women would certainly have considered some paintings as being quite near to pure pornography - the US aircraft noseart exposition would be surely censored in some places like Saudi Arabia). In the wartime there certainly was not "political correctness" in US air units limiting the artistic freedom but for the PR-department of USAAF and official propaganda it may have been some kind of issue.

Thus I wonder if the photos of US combat aircraft with this kind of artistic decoration passed through the censorship or were proudly published as artistic masterpieces in official publications and newsreels during the wartime (after all the nude art has been part of artistic heritage of western world since the ancient Greek/Roman times).

I also noted that in some planes there were painted normal photographic images of women with just faces and first names and not at all erotic - I wonder if these paintings represented the wives or well established girlfriends of the pilots?

[Graham Boak]

Not necessarily, some of them were film stars and others taken from pin-ups. As far as I know, the nudes were censored before any photographs were released to the public. Given the public morals of the time - even married couples were seen in separate beds or with one foot remaining on the floor - it would be astonishing to find it otherwise. At times censorship was directly applied to the aircraft, swimsuits appearing where the women were previously unadorned. We can only wonder how many of the clothed women appearing in photos of such art were originally naked.

[Buckeye30]

An order from HQ 313rd BW ( March 31 1945) required removal of pin-ups from their B-29s .......
" Group Commanders will see that all pictures of women are removed from aircraft of their Group".
Presumably this applied to the other Twentieth AF groups too . Reason given was that the B-29 was a special aeroplane and should be treated as such. In the event some units delayed this procedure but others changed to Group insignias or went for city names, nicknames in an arrow, Seabees badges etc. Certainly there were B-29s still with female artwork at war's end , these aircraft had some of the best of WW2.
There was a certain amount of pressure in the Eighth AF for "cleaning up" their B17s and 24s and clothing was added in some cases but not generally enforced ( in the interest of morale in most Groups). But in the Eighth and Ninth cartoons were very popular anyway as nose-art.
Nick