Professional artists were not the only people who undertook artistic activity in wartime. Soldiers, sailors and airmen often adorned their equipment with badges and emblems. The practice has a long history. Eighteenth-century powder horns, for example, frequently exhibited skillful carvings depicting camp scenes and battles. In the present century cartoon figures have appeared on ships, tanks, aircraft, and other equipment; some subjects have been favoured on both German and Allied aircraft.
Willie the Wolf was a Halifax bomber assigned to No. 426 (Thunderbird) Squadron in July 1944. It flew no operational sorties with that unit; instead it was transferred to No. 408 (Goose) Squadron which shared the base at Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire with No. 426. This machine undertook its first operational flight on 4 August, bombing Bois de Cassan, France in support of Allied troops. On 18 April, 1945 Willie the Wolf flew the last of its fifty-eight sorties, a raid on the German island fortress of Heligoland. During the aircraft's career it was not manned by any particular crew; twenty-one different pilots flew Willie the Wolf against such objectives as Kiel, Cologne, Hamburg, Essen and Leipzig. At the end of the war the aircraft was scrapped, only the anonymous cartoon panel (312 x 152 cm) being preserved.
Courtesy: Canadian War Museum, National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (2-3-12)
