The Dragon and His Tail

Sarkis Bartigian had trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and spent the years before the war painting murals for restaurants and movie theaters. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces at thirty-six, far older than most of the men around him, and was assigned to the 43rd Bomb Group in the Pacific Theater.

On the fuselage of B-24J number 44-40973, Bartigian painted what became the largest known nose art in World War II. The Dragon and His Tail depicted a massive dragon clutching a nude woman, rendered in full color from the nose turret down the entire length of both sides of the Liberator's fuselage to the tail turret. It was not a quick sketch or a pin-up copy. It was a mural, painted with the skill of a man who had spent his career making large images on surfaces that were never meant to hold them.

The Dragon survived the war. It was flown to the Wunderlich Contracting Company's scrapping facility at Kingman, Arizona, where 5,500 aircraft were being reduced to aluminum ingots. The workers at Kingman were so moved by Bartigian's artwork that they kept the aircraft until last, setting it aside while they processed the other bombers. They hoped someone would come to buy it. The asking price was reportedly just two thousand dollars.

Nobody came. The Dragon was scrapped with the rest.

Bartigian returned home to his wife Mabel. He was killed in an automobile accident in 1955, at forty-nine years old. His masterpiece had already been melted down and turned into pots and pans and car parts.

In 1998, the Collings Foundation repainted their flying B-24J in Dragon and His Tail livery as a tribute. The artwork was considered "too bold" for some air show spectators, and the livery was eventually removed. The Dragon was censored twice: once by the smelter, once by the modern audience.