Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Scherf on November 09, 2010, 12:47:52 AM
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...do any of y'all know what the original "Sugarland Express" was?
I ask the question based on one of the noseart shots in the Wishlist A-26 thread. One of the A-26 survivors carries the image of a stylised pinup girl with this name.
It so happens that Jeff Ethell once uploaded a pic from his collection of a USAAF Mosquito with that same motif.
I've attached the Mossie pic - sorry it's so grainy but it's zoomed in from a small original.
(http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad212/mhuxt/Sugarland.jpg)
Again, copyright is Jeff Ethell collection.
Anyone know who girlie is? Seems there was a number of aircraft christened this way, something like "Shoo Shoo Baby."
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Maybe the name refers to original pilot's place of origin e.g. Sugar Land TX and it is just "some" pin-up girl as it is hard to say if the face represents any real person. Of course it could be a late war pin-up girl from that district, too, but I don't know who it could be.
http://napoleon130.tripod.com/id351.html
http://napoleon130.tripod.com/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://napoleon130.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/img_3295.jpg&target=tlx_new
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it was a fairy common motif those days and there were various Shoo Shoo Babys around:
http://www.gyan.com/AirForceMuseumAirPowerShooShooShooBaby.jpg
http://www.457thbombgroup.org/NoseArt/Shoo_Shoo_Baby.jpg
http://www.victory-girl.com/images/shoo-shoo-baby.gif
http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/militarynoseart/FrankCline/Shoo-ShooBaby460w.jpg
http://www.zplace2b.com/464th/images/big/nart/13tart_shoo.jpg
http://www.303rdbg.com/gc-shooshoobaby358.jpg
http://flyingfortresspub.com/images/248_Shoo_Shoo_Shoo_Baby.JPG
I'm pretty sure the idea comes from this song: Andrews Sisters 1943: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNxIT6dlLU
:)
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PS. Here is a nice and interesting painting as the painter says her father's aircraft was called Shoo Shoo Baby: http://www.colegallery.net/title.php?ititlenum=2576
PPS. Various Pin-up girls from that era. http://www.skylighters.org/photos/pinups.html
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=shoo+shoo+baby (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=shoo+shoo+baby)
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Thanks Gents.
Yes, Shoo Shoo Baby, got that one covered.
For Sugarland Express however, Google gives me a Spielberg movie, 6000-odd hits after filtering out various obvious non-applicable words. Was having a bet someone here knew "the rest of the story", so to speak.
Didn't know about Sugarland Texas though, maybe that's a start. In the A-26 pic, cutie-pie is trailing a flag with a single star, seems right.
I've seen the USAAF mossie before, in a B&W film; a piece of shameless self-promotion by de Havilland's. Always thought it would make a pretty skin somewhere - at least in the film, one can see where the RAF roundels have been painted over and the American markings put on. Much the nicest, most stylish noseart I've seen on a Mosquito.
Seems almost a metaphor for the cooperation between the two airforces:
"This is our Mosquito. We're rather proud of it, old boy."
"Paint's a little plain. Let me fix that for ya, pal."