Shoo Shoo Baby

The Andrews Sisters had a hit in 1943 with "Shoo-Shoo Baby," and a crew of the 91st Bomb Group at Bassingbourn liked the name enough to give it to their B-17. Corporal Tony Starcer painted the nose art, basing the pin-up on Alberto Vargas's "Hawaii" illustration from Esquire magazine.

Shoo Shoo Baby flew combat missions over Europe until it was forced to land in neutral Sweden after battle damage. The aircraft sat out the rest of the war in Swedish custody. After V-E Day, it passed through France and Germany before being abandoned in civilian service in Europe. By the 1960s, it was sitting in a field.

Australian aviation historian Steve Birdsall tracked it down. French officials donated the aircraft to the United States Air Force in 1972. It was disassembled, crated, trucked to Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany, and airlifted to the United States aboard a C-5A Galaxy transport.

The 512th Antique Restoration Group at Dover Air Force Base took on the restoration. Sixty thousand man-hours of work. In 1981, they tracked down Tony Starcer, who had not touched a paintbrush since leaving the service in 1945. For thirty-six years, the most prolific nose art painter of the Eighth Air Force had worked in a warehouse for the May Company distribution center in California.

They brought him to Dover to repaint his original artwork on the restored bomber. Starcer picked up a brush for the first time in thirty-six years and recreated the Vargas-inspired pin-up from memory.

He died in 1986, before the full restoration was completed. His recreated artwork remains on the aircraft today, now housed at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.