Chocks away!

[davywavy]

Something which soldiers have done since time immemorial is to decorate and personalise their machines of war. It my be against regulations to deface military property, but most commanders realise that for whatever reason; be it ownership or amusement or agression, such decoration is ueful for morale and they don't put a stop to it.
The male mind being what it is (and most soldiers are boys), such decorations tend to take one of two formats - either pretty girls (both the Enola Gay and the Memphis Belle were named after the girls painted on their fuselage), or agression and threat (such as Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers and their iconic Shark Mouth design). It's not just the Americans who acted this way either: the Red Baron was so named because he deliberately painted his entire plane red to draw attention to himself.
The recent Gulf War saw a resurgence in such decoration, expecially within the Air Forces. With so many pilots from different nations, it was inevitable that they would try to individualise themselves and stand out but whilst the images used by the US Air Force tended to be agressively patriotic, the British, in their usual half-arsed, piss-taking way, were, shall we say, less serious about such things:







And my personal favourite:

Comments

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

last one... does not... compute

^_^

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

What I love most about this is the mental image; lined up with all the US warplanes covered with Go Go USA! slogans, a UK plane with the image of a schoolboy with a wind problem.
Anyone would think we weren't taking it seriously :)

[riksowden.livejournal.com]

Or that we're taking it just seriously enough...

[silver-blue.livejournal.com]

Never understood the attraction of Viz humour.

God knows what the last guy is doing though. He must be in a terrible state every time he reads the paper - he's in the military so he's inherently bad, he's flying a plane and therefore destroying the planet with carbon emissions and he's an imperialist lackey of the USA.

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

That is outstanding.

It reminds me of a segment I saw on a news show years ago, after the whole post 9-11 world fire sale got started. They did a contrast and compare between the tactics and mindset of the US and the UK forces. They interviewed the Brit first, asking him what the plans were for a forthcoming operation. His response was a measured breakdown of the British Army's tactical approach to the situation, given the political leanings of the local populace, and how they intended to utilise the geography and layout of the area to their advantage while leveraging this-and-that in order to suppress the enemy with minimal loss of life.

The American commander's response was (and I quote): "We're gonna go in there and kick some Iraqi ass!"

I often wonder what they think when they look at the responses other nations and cultures have when compared to their own. They do a lot of things well, but I never put much stock in redfaced windbaggery.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Presumably it's so if he's shot down over an Al Queda position, they'll take one look and say "It's okay effendis! He's on our side!"

[(Anonymous)]

No Gentlefolk, you completely misunderstand the true glory that is England. Here we have an agonized angst ridden urban middle class boy, who is still prepared to rain down death on the enemies of Her Majesty (or maybe Tony Blair). Anyway, my heart swelled with pride to see that the Guardian readers of this World can confound DavyWavy's prejudii.

this Island story will have no End....

D

[(Anonymous)]

(I also note that it is the Squadron Leaders machine)

[(Anonymous)]

...still prepared to rain down death on the enemies of Her Majesty (or maybe Tony Blair).

Tony Blair is the enemy of Her Majesty.

[applez.livejournal.com]

Nice style! That'll tell them AQ what for! ;-)