Phil Brinkman

Phil Brinkman arrived in the Army Air Forces with more formal training than any other known nose art painter. He had studied at Washington University's School of Fine Arts, then at the Grand Central Academy of Art in New York under Harvey Dunn. Before the war, he worked for the Ruth Ruff Ryan agency, the Benton Bowles agency in New York, and the Gardner Advertising Agency in Chicago. He was not a mechanic who could draw. He was a professional advertising art director who happened to be wearing a uniform.

The Army, predictably, had no idea what to do with him. His Military Occupational Specialty was listed as "Draftsman." There was no MOS for "artist." The military bureaucracy that fielded millions of men in dozens of specialties had not imagined that one of them might be a trained muralist.

Brinkman was assigned to the 486th Bomb Group's 834th Bomb Squadron at Sudbury, Suffolk, England. He conceived an idea that no other nose art painter in the war attempted: a unified visual identity for an entire squadron. Each of the 834th's B-24 Liberators would bear one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, painted by Brinkman in a consistent style that marked the squadron as a unit.

He completed eleven of the twelve zodiac signs before the war ended. None of the Zodiac aircraft was lost during the forty-nine missions the 486th flew before transitioning to B-17s. The missing twelfth sign remains one of the small, perfect mysteries of the war.

Brinkman also painted murals on the bases where he served: the Service Men's Club at Davis-Monthan Field in Tucson and the base facilities at Sudbury, England. He returned to the United States aboard the Queen Elizabeth on August 31, 1945.

After the war, he resumed painting and eventually settled in Englewood, Florida, where he was active in the Gulf Coast art scene until his death in May 2000 in Gainesville, Florida.