During WWII as a morale booster in the USAAF, crews of aircraft were allowed to adorn them with names and images of anything so long as it wasn't offensive. It wasn't just grab some paint and 'graffiti-ize' your plane, the designs had to be approved by those in authority. Crews named aeroplanes after their home town, girlfriend, mother, even their dog! But the majority of names depicted the character of the aircraft or crew. A temperamental plane may have the name 'Sweat and Pray' or 'Sloppy but Safe'. A crew who'd had enough may choose the name 'Miss Gee Eyewanta (Go Home)'. Specialised units and planes chose names for the role they played such as 'Nemesis of Aeroembolism' which was a B17 used in high altitude crew testing. (Aeroembalism is rather like the flying version of 'the bends' caused by rapid altitude decompression).
There were thousands of planes
and thousands of names. But the images were mostly of women copied from
the paintings of Alberto Vargas which were featured in the Esquire magazine
of that time. Painted onto the nose of the aeroplane this style of recognition
became known as
Nose Art.
This page features personal artwork chosen to fit an actual aeroplane's name. Some were designed for a certain airline which names its planes along the same criteria as the USAAF, but they only use one nose art image.