I have a question about the nose art on Bock’s Car. When was it applied on the plane. The art we see now would have been applied well after the Nagasaki mission, so what was painted on the plane that day?
Count me as one of those nitpickers, mainly because I’m an editor by profession, and the placement of apostrophes and spaces is a matter of greater import to me than it is to most people.
I mean no disrespect to you, Broomstick or to Lt. Col. Olivi, but the meaning of the name is clear: playing on the word boxcar, in which trains hauled freight, it refers to the plane as the “car” of Capt. Bock, because it, too, hauled freight (of a very different kind). In English we form the possessive with an apostrophe, hence what was intended, whether the contemporaries wrote it this way or not, was Bock’s Car.
Now if Capt. Bock himself had christened the plane Bockscar, I would accept that as its name, but I have seen no evidence that this was the case. The scholars I cited (and others) prefer “Bock’s Car,” and are in a better position than any of us to determine from the records of the period what Bock himself intended.
The Wikipedia entry and the USAF Museum explicitly have chosen to use the nose art as their source, even though, as the museum’s site says, that art was painted after the mission. But even if it predated the mission, it wouldn’t necessarily be authoritative. The way a name is rendered in any logo is not the final word. In the case of the nose art, the apostrophe could have been left out for artistic reasons or because the painter was ignorant. If the pilot meant “Bock’s Car,” the art doesn’t override that intent.
Here’s a similar case:
Crap. I hit the Submit button by mistake. :smack:
Never mind my similar case. I decided I didn’t like it that much.
Anyway, sorry if I appear pedantic or dogmatic, but even if you, Broomstick, were not basing your usage on the nose art, I would wager that Lt. Col. Olivi, along with other usually reliable sources, was. I just don’t feel that in this case the art stands as the authority. I suppose it’s a religious difference, ultimately.