Monday, January 02, 2006

Bomber Jacket Mystery Art

I just stumbled across an unopened Hasbro "B-17 Bomber Mission" carded set at Goodwill today. A nice and unusual find there, and this
version jacket I didn't get when it was out in stores. I think there were two or three different jacket paintings sold in this set. The others were
authentic WWII (in fact, I've seen the actual jacket one of them is based on in the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson), but this one
looks wrong. The style of the art doesn't seem WWII, but much later.

It looks to me like 70's vintage comic book art. The style of clothing on the "bomber girl" also looks 70s.

The art features a blonde woman with long hair, standing with feet apart. She has a mini-skirt, tight mid-calf boots, "cow-girl" cuff gloves, and a shirt tied under her breasts "Daisy Duke" style. She's holding the end of a bomb in her right hand, which is balanced on its
fins next to her. The bomb says "Texas Queen." A couple of WWII-looking single-engine fighters (they look vaguely like Mustangs, but no belly scoops, and they have "Flying Tiger" type teeth painted on the noses) are flying over her shoulders dropping bombs.

A curved banner behind her legs and the bomb is partially obscured and either
says 381st Bomber Group (which is a real WWII bomber group) or maybe 387th Bomber Group (which doesn't turn up any hits on Google).

Given that the art on the rest of this series was authentic, it seems strange if Hasbro just had an artist make this jacket art up. I consider it more likely that it's based on a real jacket, though
possibly not one from WWII. Of maybe my eye for art is just failing me, and this is just ahead of its time.

Does anybody know the story on this jacket art?

1 comment:

evildm said...

Wow I wish I knew, doesn't match any of the jackets I have. But that one is a definite keeper.
jeff