Bashful B-24D-CO 41-11776 98th Bomb Group, 343rd Bomb Squadron Nose art painted by Amos NICHOLSON 98th Bomb Group North Africa This aircraft was also known as Jersey Jackass

The Pyramidiers' 343rd Bomb Squadron made good use of many of the other characters from the "Snow White" film including Prince Charming, the Witch and, of course, the seven dwarfs. "Bashful" was another of Amos Nicholson's skilful paintings with the figure facing forward, as it did with all his nose arts. It is believed that Amos painted all his first versions of the Disney dwarfs using a traditional shadow script for the titling. "Happy" was an exception to this, it used a shadow sans serif style for the title and the second version of "Dopey" used an entirely different approach to the titling, with multi-coloured, jumbled letters.

The right side of "Bashful" was previously painted by another 98BG artist as "Jersey Jackass". It was another of the B24s which were tragically lost on the daring low level mission to Ploesti on 1st August 1943. Six of John McGraw's crew were killed that day and the three survivors became prisoners or war. The B24D had begun combat flying a year earlier on 25th August 1942 when it was taken to bomb the Corinth Canal by Lt Muehlberg who would fly no less than 25 missions in the plane up to mid-April 1943. A further 15 missions were added by other crews until it was brought down in Romania on the infamous Ploesti mission with the 389BG crew of John McGraw.

Known Mission List

 

Information Update for Readers of "Plane Names & Fancy Noses - 91st Bomb Group (Heavy)"