Edward A. Ritter

Edward A. Ritter served on board the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid (CV-11) as a pilot during World War II. He served with fighter squadron VF-18, which was embarked on Intrepid in 1944, and flew the Grumman F4F Hellcat. He was a lieutenant junior grade.

Ritter was a trained artist. On board Intrepid, he spent his downtime painting cartoons of his fellow pilots or vignettes of life on board the ship. The main character was a bumbling pilot named Snipo. Snipo's appearance—not his flying ability—was modeled after a fellow pilot in VF-18, Edgar Gerald Blankenship. Ritter's cartoons were well known to the crewmembers and became great morale boosters.

Ritter was from Brooklyn, New York. In December 1945, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a story about him and his paintings. According to the article, all of the original paintings were lost during the kamikaze attacks of November 25, 1944. However, the ship's photographer had made prints of them for distribution to the crew. In 1945, after Ritter had been released from the military, he received a package in the mail. The ship's photographer had mailed him prints of all 26 of his paintings.

Edward Ritter died in 2010.