WWII aircraft nose art. The inscription of art work on military planes dates to World War I when paintings were usually extravagant company or unit insignia. However, regulations were put in place after the war to stymie the practice. As the United States entered World War II, nose art regulations were relaxed, or in many cases totally ignored. WWII would become the golden age of aircraft artistry. The artwork was typically painted on the nose of the plane, and the term "nose art" was coined.

Owen Hughes was born in Freemont, Ohio, in 1919. After high school, he worked as a commercial sign painter and trained in hand lettering techniques. In anticipation of the draft, Owen joined the Army Air Force hoping to become a flyer. After arriving for training in aerial photography in Patterson Field, Ohio, he was deployed overseas to England. Owen was stationed at Burtonwood Airfield and later went to Paris, where he worked and lived in the airplanes beneath the Eiffel Tower. In his later years, he designed the nose art for Doc, one of only two B29 bomber planes still flying today. Owen continues to attend air shows throughout the country.

First Encounter with Germans:
"I was all over England, in Pointon Park, which was a small village. And it was in the village park. That was our first encounter with the Germans.
We were in tents that the British had set up for us. And we heard some strange plane it sounded strange to us. We knew the American planes; just from the sound we could tell what was American. We heard this strange plane, and we all went out of our tents and looked up like this. And the plane dropped a flare. And left.

Well, [laughs] we got chewed out by the British. I forget what rank he was, but he chewed us out. “You blokes had perfect portraits taken by the Germans!” They flew over and took a photograph of us. There we are standing there looking at him. And we shouldn’t have done that! Well, we didn’t know.