One day last summer, when the new Navy torpedo boats were being launched, Lieutenant E. S. Caldwell, then of the Naval Operations office in Washington, wrote a letter to Walt Disney in Hollywood, asked Disney to design an emblem appropriate for this new “mosquito fleet." Few days later, back to the fleet came the emblem painted outside the bridge of the torpedo boat shown at right. The little mosquito, streaking through the water with a tar's hat on his head and a shiny torpedo held between his many legs, made such a hit that every torpedo boat in the fleet soon had a Disney mosquito.
As soon as word got around in the Army and Navy as to what Disney had done, the Disney office was bomharded with requests to design insignia for tanks, minesweepers, bombers and fighting planes. Disney did his best to comply. […]
