The military moves in


Disney, who served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France at the end of World War I, was happy to assist. In truth, however, he had no choice. “The Army moved in and ex- propriated space at the studio with- out his consent,” Lesjak says. In an interview with his daugh-


ter, Diane, and author Pete Martin, Disney recalled: “I was at home and we got word [on the radio] that [the Japanese had] bombed Pearl Harbor. ... Shortly after that, I got a call from the studio manager, and he had been called, in turn, by the police. He said, ‘Walt, the Army is moving in on us.’ They came up and said they wanted to move in, and [he] said, ‘I’d have to call [Walt],’ and [the Army] said, ‘Call him, but we’re moving in anyway.’ Five hun- dred troops moved into the studio.” The Army claimed one of the studio’s largest soundstages as well as sheds used for employee parking and other facilities; offi ces became sleep-


ing quarters for military personnel, Disney recalled. As the studio be- came more involved in war-related projects, the Coast Guard placed guards at all entrances, and employ- ees and visitors were required to wear government-issued ID badges.


Training and propaganda


Walt Disney Studios’ fi rst military contract was with the Navy’s Bu- reau of Aeronautics, for whom it produced 21 training fi lms on air- craft and warship identifi cation. Requests for instructional fi lms from all branches soon followed, and Disney’s talented animators worked


68 MILITARY OFFICER FEBRUARY 2017


long hours to keep pace, producing short fi lms on topics ranging from aircraft carrier landing signals to the fundamentals of artillery weapons. Of particular interest is a series


of fi lms created under the direction of fi ghter pilot John Smith “Jimmy” Thach, who was famous for develop- ing the revolutionary aviation tactics that gave Allied pilots in the Pacifi c an edge over Japan’s more maneu- verable A6M aircraft. “Thach came to the Disney studio to advise artists on the fi ne art of warfare,” Lesjak says. The result was a series of 10


Walt Disney poses in front of a Red Cross ambulance — decorated with one of his drawings — in Paris at the end of World War I.


a scathing parody of Nazism and won the Academy Award for Best Animat- ed Short Film in 1943.


Animated insignia


Another unique Disney contribution to the war eff ort was the design of nearly 1,200 military insignia. Naval Reserve Aviation Cadet Burt Stanley requested the fi rst offi cial Disney- designed insignia in June 1939. He asked Disney if he could create an in- signia for the “Fighting Seven” Squad- ron based aboard USS Wasp (CV-7). Disney was happy to oblige and gave the assignment to studio artist Van Kaufman, who de- signed an insignia fea- turing an angry wasp with boxing gloves. As the war pro-


gressed, more and more military units and squadrons came to display insignia de- signed by Walt Disney Studios, including the PT boat squadron known as the “Mos- quito Fleet”; Claire Lee Chennault’s “Fly- ing Tigers”; and the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, com-


short fi lms that included such titles as Use of the Illuminated Gun Sight and Don’t Kill Your Friends. Accord- ing to Lesjak, only six of the 10 shorts still are known to exist. Military instructional fi lms occu- pied the majority of Disney’s creative team, but the studio still managed to produce some excellent theatri- cal shorts for the public, including fi ve anti-Nazi propaganda cartoons released in 1943: Reason and Emo- tion, Chicken Little, Education for Death, Der Führer’s Face, and Victory Through Air Power. Der Führer’s Face, which can be viewed on YouTube (bit .ly/2hRW1DQ), stars Donald Duck in


manded by Lord Louis Mountbatten, who personally customized a special insignia during a visit to the studio in 1941. (The result was Donald Duck in an admiral’s uniform standing astride a toy model of the ship.) The studio also designed for the Offi ce of Strategic Services a special insignia that showed Donald Duck swinging a hammer and destroying a bridge. Perhaps the most unusual request for insignia came from the girlfriend of Army Air Forces pilot Capt. Robert Bishop, a POW in Stalag Luft III, a German POW camp. She enclosed an emblem — an illustration of Donald Duck behind bars with the caption “I


PHOTO: BOURNEMOUTH NEWS & PICTURE SERVICE


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