"Cheesecake Pin-Up Girls on U.S. Sherman Tanks in WWII" Topic

"As I previously mentioned in a more general post, I'm fascinated by cheesecake pin-up art on WWII vehicles, particularly armed fighting vehicles. (Please see: ww2in172.com/?p=534.) The M4 Sherman being one of my favorite tanks, I searched extensively for pin-ups strictly on such tanks. After poring through numerous websites and books — I have two dozen books specifically on the Sherman — I could locate only eight WWII Sherman tanks with pin-ups. Here they are, with information on the moniker the crew used for the tank, the type of Sherman hull, the unit and location where the tank served, the source of this data, and information on available 1/72 scale decals. To date, none of these tanks has been produced by any of the manufacturers of 1/72 prebuilt models…"

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ww2in172.com/?p=573

Amicalement
Armand

OH MY !!!! How scandalous !

Yeah, we couldn't get away with this stuff. The sergeant major would have our hides. We were lucky that they let us put nicknames for our tanks on the muzzle evacuator. Otherwise, besides bumper ids, coalition chevrons, and a battalion number, we didn't have anything on our tanks.

Boring dress right, dress…

Usually taped up on the inside turret wall by the loader, if we did that.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

"Yeah, we couldn't get away with this stuff."

Well, you can't expect Pentagon bureaucrats to be able to relate to troop morale or esprit de corps.

B

So very true … but remember there were a lot more females in the US ARMY when many of us served. Albeit, no female were in Combat Arms at that time.

IIRC, didn't a USN fighter unit have the Playboy Bunny logo on its' tail rudders? But had to remove those as well? During the '70s or '80?

I think the reason you didn't see "morale" pictures on US armor in the ETO is more practical than anything else.

Just consider the pictures of tanks with armor penetrations in their white stars. Why give AT gunners another aiming point?

You didn't see many national markings on the sides of tanks by late summer of '44.

And unsurprisingly, the stars appeared again once the allies were over the Rhine in force.

Fast forward to modern times, I did have a surrepticous stripper silhouette painted in black on the tail fin of my helicopter in the gulf war. Black is really hard to see against the dark green drab color of Army helos.

It was appropriate because the aircraft's nickname was The Desert Dancer!

Sadly I lost the picture of it in a move and it got painted over prior to boarding the ship to come home.

Yes, as some noted, the international insignia, etc., on some WWII AFVs, etc. ended up being "aiming points" for the enemy. E.g. Roundels, Stars, etc., …