Twelve F-15E Strike Eagle came down the approach at RAF Lakenheath on 16 September, six at a time, callsigns TREND 11 to 16 and then TREND 21 to 26. The tailcodes read MO. Mountain Home, Idaho. They were not stopping long.

What made ground crews and photographers stare was what was painted on the noses. Thanos. Darth Maul. The Joker. The T-1000. The Undertaker. And, improbably, two characters from the Austin Powers films.

After six months in the Middle East, the 389th Fighter Squadron came home with the most idiosyncratic set of markings the F-15E community has produced in years.

Who Painted What

The list, jet by jet, is a decent snapshot of what a fighter squadron finds funny at the end of a long deployment.

87-0204 is “Guardian”, and it is the odd one out. 87-0182 became “Thanos”, carrying a version of the Infinity War line about destiny arriving whether you run from it or not, which lands differently when it is stencilled on the nose of a strike fighter. 87-0207 is “Darth Maul”. 87-0209 is “Undertaker”, the sole professional wrestling reference and the only one that required the artist to render a man in a black hat.

Then the Austin Powers block: 91-0330 is “Goldmember” and 91-0333 is “Mr Fat Bastard”, which closed out the first six. The second tranche opened with 87-0169 as “T-1000”, the liquid-metal antagonist from Terminator 2, and 88-1697 as “Joker”. One more carried “Fear Magneto”.

The Markings Tell You More Than the Artwork

Nose art is decoration. The small symbols next to it are not, and this set is unusual.

Strike Eagles coming home from recent Middle East tours have typically arrived plastered with bomb symbols, sometimes dozens per jet. These do not. They carry plain tally marks instead.

That points at a different job. Tally marks on a Strike Eagle generally count things shot down rather than things bombed, and a squadron positioned at Ovda in southern Israel sits well back from any front line. Put those together and the picture is defensive counter air: sitting on station, waiting for drones and missiles to come to you, and knocking them down.

The “Fear Magneto” jet is the tell, and somebody in the squadron clearly enjoyed the joke. Magneto’s entire schtick is stopping incoming metal objects in mid-air. It is, as unit humour goes, unusually on the nose.

Two jets, “Darth Maul” and “Undertaker”, also carry a distinctive red marking that looks like a cruise missile. Similar symbols on 366th Fighter Wing jets in the past have been understood to record AGM-158 JASSM launches, though those were black. What the change of colour signifies has not been explained.

Why Lakenheath, and Why It Matters

Lakenheath is not their base. It is the natural staging point for a transatlantic leg, and it is also one of the most heavily photographed airfields in Europe, which is why the world saw these jets at all. Had they routed somewhere quieter, the artwork would have been scrubbed off in Idaho and nobody would have known.

Which is worth remembering about nose art generally. It is temporary, semi-official, and it exists in the gap between what a squadron wants to say and what an air force will tolerate. The markings will come off. For about a day in Suffolk, twelve Strike Eagles told you more about six months of work than any press release did.

An MO-coded Strike Eagle with nose art turning in to RAF Lakenheath. The markings are only visible for as long as the jets are on this side of the Atlantic.

Sources: The Aviationist; U.S. Air Force; Air & Space Forces Magazine