Can you get me some more info on your friend? Squadron, theater, what he painted, etc? Or pm me a phone number for him if he likes talking about that stuff? In a similar vein, I have been involved with a project for the past year that will hopefully come to fruition this summer. It will knock your socks off if you love nose art and nose art history.
I am lucky to have so many friends that are as nerdy about it as me and are keepers of the flame so to speak.Their originals provide invaluable reference to me and what I do. This is just some of the work that I have done in the recent years. The is a lot of them at my image hosting website. Feel free to peep em. www.picturetrail.com./jrome Here are some of my faves. Plus restorations. Restorations Originals by me Patches too. A precursor to car club logos for sure. Very passionate and very dear to my heart. thanks for making the post Ryan it is well approached and fun. Rome
Hey Great topic, love the show. I have been collecting flight jackets and assorted vintage memorabilia since the mid to late 90's. I have seen personal collections and museums rotating stock as well as being a nerd about it growing up within a mile of General Billy Mitchell intl. airport my whole life. I have been painting flight jackets for veterans and aficionados since 1994. Yes many of these guys were hero's just like the majority of most personnel and supremely humble about it. I look at these jackets as the last written history of the bygone era because as the veterans memories fade this will be the things that we remember the most and as I have seen first hand , really JOG some of the ol ' timers memories as well. So this subject is very near and dear to my heart. Fantastic originals command a pretty decent premium and are far and few between. The best reproductions are made right here in the USA still. Plus the owner knows more about originals than anyone I have ever met ... yep bigger nerd than me. http://www.goodwearleather.com/pages/index.html And for the more budget minded. http://www.gibson-barnes.com/ The japanese and english reproduction companies make excellent ones as well and there cloth and nylon jackets are unmatched with their attention to detail and extremely dedicated fascination with all things vintage americana. So there are options out there without wearing a fragile piece history. https://www.realmccoys.co.jp/catalog/ http://www.thefewmfg.com/catalog.cgi http://www.aeroleatherclothing.com/ http://historypreservation.com/hpassociates/index.html http://www.buzzricksons.jp/top.html The thing is people will get all bent about what does this or vintage clothing have to do with hotrods. This along with some of the more recent keepers of the flame have a LOT more to do with traditional hotrodders then EFI or turbo deisel rat rod POS mobiles and s-10 frame swaps Ugg.... I really don't want to get into it is there seems to be a proliferation of it by glancing at the magazine rack. So without getting too far off base look at the Don Montgomery books of all the hotrodders that wore these things because at the time they were cheap , plentiful, and above most purposeful . they worked. A-2's, B-15's, N-1 deck jackets and the always popular G-1 Or M-442a in ww2 speak One of my favorite pics is Barney Navarro standing to the back of his hotrod wearing his A-2. Anyway I love seeing originals and here are some followed by some of the work that I have done. ORIGINALS A super RARE all white B-3 belonging to Clair Chennaults adjutant from 1938 Plus the original hand embroidered silk scarf Some more originals from a collector friend.
Jerome - Figues you are a HAMBer. I've been admiring your work for a while and LOVE the attention to the little details that make them look like they could have been painted back in '43. Do you use acrylic or sign paint? I guess I wonder if the materials you use to paint the old designs are the same that the originals were painted with. This is the stuff that keeps me up at night.
Don't let it keep you up.... it will wear you down. How did my posts get flipped? I meant to put the second one first.....whatever I think you got it. I prefer to use createx airbrush colors on all of my jackets very similar to auto air but just basic colors without metallics. I have been thinking of com-art or medea but I'm just used to createx. Thinned down and used like a washed/layered watercolor works pretty nice . They have both transparent and opaque colors. The only thing I use an airbrush for is the blending of skin tones or laying down lots of color. Everything else is hand painted. Yes they used airbrushes back then , what do you think Vargas used? Plus a spray gun is just a large airbrush and I have seen nose art done very crudely with a paint gun. It was a p-47 from the 56th FG. Not common mind you but it was done. Back then, from what I have seen the majority like 90% of jackets were done in sign painters enamels but the best preserved ones were usually done in oils. There are some really pretty jackets that were done in the 12th and 15th airforces (Italy) I have heard of paints being thinned with av fuel and whatever was on base. I just prefer acrylics because they are very durable flexible and pretty damn permanent once sealed with a clear topcoat. I literally can take any of the jackets I have painted and ball it up , un do it and its fine . Acrylic=plastic, plastic is flexible. I just wish it was more opaque and rich like sign painters enamels. Usually a white base in the shape of my finished illustration is laid down first and painted over like a blank canvas. Hope that helps. Rome
My dad was a tail gunner on the B-17 called Rough Darts and had one in WWII, but it was "lost". On his 65th birthday we presented him with a bomber jacket and a model of a B-17 and a ME-262 that I had built. The reason for the 262 was that he shot one down. Later that year he found a guy to put the artwork on it like the original. When he passed away, My brothers and sisters said I should get all his military memrabillia. I have them all put away in a safe place. Last year I took a flight in the B-17 Aluminum Overcast. It still leaves goosebumps on me thinking about all the brave men that flew in them during wartime not knowing if they would make it back. Dad flew 28 missions. He has a purple heart none of us kids knew about....never talked about it.
They are all beautiful jackets. But I could never wear one. Real or replica. The real wearers walked the walk. And the replicas........well it just seems wrong.
here's a clip I found online about him http://www2.wsav.com/news/2010/nov/10/world-war-two-vet-still-painting-nose-art-ar-1074045/ he lives in Greenwood, SC he's probably in the book if not you can reach him throught the arts council where he still has a studio and teaches almost every day. here's the link to them http://www.emeraldtriangle.sc/ArtsCouncil/Default.aspx he's super guy with a great life story. among many other things he was a corporate pilot and his co-pilot was Aaron Tippen.
Thats some awesome collection. I had a local US Army Air Corps Ret. Col. that had an amazing collection of original nose art pictures he took many in color. I knew him growing up but could believe the colelction he amassed of air craft. He was in the photography unit during the war and had access to cameras. I later found out he was a major contributor to various publications. I don't know what happened to his photos but I knew of a collection at the USS Intrepid. Wouldn't be neat to pick a couple for a HAMB board commemoration to the Greatest Generation.
Cheater Rome does awesome work and I think he has painted many bomber jackets for surviving air crews.
Wow, Jerome! Thank you for the history and info and willingness to share your methods. You do beautiful work and I love the canvas too!
Walt Disney is STILL contributing to the war effort. To this day, we give out DVDs made in 1942 that Disney animated which explained the Cycle of Operations of the 40mm Bofors cannon (still in use on AC-130s today). The gun is so confusing to learn, Disney made a KILLER cartoon which explained in great detail as to how it worked. We still have ammo that comes to us marked "1944". Back in 2004 in Fallujah, I was a Special Operations helicopter gunner and thought it would be cool to modify my flight jacket. Had the background of Iraq, palm trees, and some nefarious individuals of "Middle Eastern descent" on it. Long story short, a senior officer from OUTSIDE of my chain of command raised bloody hell about it, and I had to get rid of it. Operation: DENY MORALE. In effect since Conventional Force Leadership entered the AOR. So much with keeping up with our history...
For you Disney fans, there's an excellent book available titled "Disney Dons Dogtags" worth the price!
So true and actually since ww2 this has gone on and usually the extra adornment is done at the discretion of the C.O. There is a great line at the end of apocalypse now spoken by brando (Col. Kurtz) about... " We train Young men to drop fire on people. But their commanding officers wont allow them to write F U C K on their airplanes because it's obscene". wow. This one happened in ww2. A bomber crew "unintentionally" becomes a propaganda film. www.merkki.com/murderinc.htm
From today at Fantasy of Flight... Today Fantasy of Flight welcomed Lt. Col. David Spelts (ret.) who flew 30 missions during World War II as a B-17 ball turret gunner (8th AF, 398th BG, 603 Bombardment Squadron, out of Nuthampstead, UK). At a hardy 88, Col. Spelts gave into his friends insistence that he climb back into the turret today. No problem at all. In fact, Col. Spelts said Fantasy of Flights authentic Sperry Ball Turret was surprisingly comfortable.
Being an artist myself of Leather Sqd/Group patches , I have had the opportunity to meet and thank a lot of the Great WW-2 era veterans , they are "the Greatest Generation" to say the least , what stories many have told me of thier missions and humorus ones as well can't be beat , they're all a world apart from this generation and sadly we're losing them in great numbers daily, so if you get the chance to talk with one, remember what they all went through for us and make sure to shake thier hand and tell them how much you appreciate what they did for us and for the freedom they gave us !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My hat's off to them all ! Johnny
The Jalopy Journal
