Today is our 1-year anniversary here at Victory Girls Blog and it hardly seems possible! One of the really fun things we’ve enjoyed over the last year, are the relationships we’ve made with the people who read us. Some of those people like us, and some…not so much.

We get a lot of reader email and during the last year, we’ve had a couple of marriage proposals, been asked out on dates, challenged on a wide variety of conservative issues, been insulted – repeatedly, had people ask for advice on life (yes, really) and have received lovely feedback from readers on posts we’ve written that touched them personally.

Sometimes, our readers share really cool military history information with us – especially because of our vintage theme. A few months ago, we received an email from a new visitor to the blog who had a question about our blog header and specifically the Alberto Vargas redhead pin-up girl we use. He was questioning if we knew anything about her history because he had a picture he wanted us to see…

“Though conservative and occasionally strong, I am not a woman. So I guess I don’t qualify as a contributor, but I am interested in the source of the pinup art in your headline banner. This picture was used by my Dad as nose art on his airplane in the Pacific during WW II.

I have never known the source of the art. If you have any information I would appreciate it.

BTW, I was brought to your blog through a link from Instapundit and lingered to explore some good writing. I’ll be back.”

Here’s the picture he sent us and take a close look at the nose art he mentions. Look familiar? Yeah, we are pretty much stoked about this email!

Rovin’ Redhead. Awesome.

By the way, this aircraft is a Navy version of a B-24 Lancaster Liberator bomber, a WW2-era aircraft that was flown through out WW2 and the Korean war. It was used for as a long-range patrol/bomber and reconnaissance by the Navy and had a long, successful life, both as an Air Force bomber and as a Navy patrol/bomber. It was also used for a long time as a fire-fighting aircraft, dropping retardant on fires until 2002, when the fleet was retired. Pretty amazing, don’t you think?

So our readers, who put up with our snark and rants, are pretty important to us. Thank you for being here with us on our 1st anniversary!

And as you can imagine with an ensemble blog like ours – made up of strong, opinionated, conservative women – our families are long suffering. We love you. Thank you for supporting our efforts to do this because we have a country to save.

And finally, we have many blog friends that have linked us over the year and we’re so appreciative of that! Among that group of bloggers, there are people who have played an important role in the ridiculous amount of success a young blog like ours has had over the last year. They have linked to us over and over; driving insane amounts of traffic to us, sending us ideas for posts with notes of encouragement, and in those early days commenting on posts when no one else did. Some of our hero blog(ger)’s include: Instapundit, The Other McCain, Pirate’s Cove, American Power, Hot Air, Protein Wisdom, Right Wing News, This Ain’t Hell, Legal Insurrection, The First St. Journal, Riehl World View, and Blackfive. Thank you so much for all your help this past year. Please keep helping us. 🙂

PS: THANKS for the Liberator vs Lancaster information! Correction made. –Kate