It isn’t a smile. It is more a predator’s sneer. Razor teeth, wagging tongue, and a 300-yard stare from black, dead eyes, focused at the spot where the warplane’s guns converge. The airplane nose art presented the face of aggression, a bit of psychological warfare intended to intimidate, created with a few ounces of paint slathered on aluminum.

World War II’s legendary American Volunteer Group, the “Flying Tigers,” made the shark mouth famous, but they weren’t the first to paint it on airplanes. During World War I, a few German pilots painted eyes and a closed-mouth frown on their Roland C.II reconnaissance aircraft. They called their fat-bellied Roland biplanes Walfische (Whales). The nose art was jocular and seemed appropriate for such tubby machines. It appeared to carry an expression more of grim determination than of real acrimony. Soon after, someone decided to add an open mouth and triangular teeth to the ensemble, giving one of the aircraft a deranged smirk.

No good idea stays a secret for long. A multitude of machines from World War I and beyond carried on the motif, which appeared on Nieuports, Sopwiths, and later, Messerschmitts, to name just a few.