The Gallery
Step into the world’s largest collection of authentic WWII Nose Art™—now fully on display.
These vivid panels, cut directly from the noses of WWII bombers, are more than paint on metal—they’re powerful relics of wartime creativity, courage, and culture. Each piece tells the story of the young airmen who personalized their aircraft with bold, often emotional artwork that reflected their hopes, fears, and sense of humor in the face of conflict.
Presented exactly as they were created in the 1940s, the artwork includes popular imagery of the era—including pin-up style illustrations—offering a window into the aesthetics and attitudes of the time.
Fans of vintage nose art can thank an Arkansas man named Minot Pratt for saving these works of art from the scrap heap. Pratt was a manager at the junkyard in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, where thousands of aircraft were sent to be cut up and disassembled after the war’s end. He liked the hand-painted pinup girls featured on the planes, and he instructed his workmen to remove them before destroying the aircraft. The metal scraps adorned with pinup girls were stored in a barn until the mid-1960s when they were donated to the CAF.
