“Miss Pick Up” » A Luscious Legacy
To commemorate the brave wartime crews operating in dire conditions over the English Channel, UK-based PBY-5A Catalina G-PBYA was repainted as USAAF 5th Emergency Rescue Squadron OA-10A 44-33915. While the majority of the scheme was easy to reproduce, the wartime aircraft’s nose art, or in this case, hull art, remained unknown for six years. When photographic evidence surfaced in 2011, aircraft operators Plane Sailing realized the “Miss Pick Up” artwork on ‘915 was closely based on the luscious Miss Lace — a character created by legendary cartoonist Milton Caniff. Aviation photographer John Dibbs volunteered his creative services to painstakingly reproduce a “Miss Pick Up” artwork. The culmination of months of hard work came together on a blustery evening at Duxford when the art, on large vinyl stickers, was applied to G-PBYA.
A visit to the Halesworth Airfield Museum archive on the site of OA-10A the original home base of “Miss Pick Up” yielded specific information on the artwork’s origin. '915’s regular radar operator, S/Sgt. Francis Glasser, donated a personal account of his training and service with the 5th ERS. At Keesler Field, Glasser was assigned to the crew of '915 in late 1944. He described how “York [Cpl. William H. York, '915’s engineer] and I found an artist who painted a blonde … on both sides of the hull and I named her ‘Miss Pick Up.’ She really drew a crowd wherever we went.” Eighty years later, Plane Sailing’s PBY “Miss Pick Up” continues the legacy, proving immensely popular at airshow appearances.