Today’s Poster. We are all familiar today with the organisation the United Nations. What’s less well known is the name dates back to the stage of World War Two when the Axis powers had united many of the rest of the world against them. From Wiki: “On New Year’s Day 1942, the Allied “Big Four”…
Tag: Fascism
Fair Flak
Today we have a children’s board game. The boxtop is pretty clear, it’s a Nazi German anti-aircraft game. Entitled ‘Adler Luftverteidigungsspiel’ (Eagles Air Defence Game) the box depicts a German 88mm Flak gun shooting down a British Bristol Blenheim Mk.IV (a favourite ‘target’ of German propaganda). The story, thanks to Board Game Geeks website: ‘This…
Bordfunker I
Today’s poster will be a companion to tomorrow’s. This one is a very unusual recruitment example for the German World War Two Luftwaffe, being for radio operators (Bordfunker). Almost all military aircrew recruitment was for pilots, those not successful in that training being redirected into the other required roles (or recruited from ground crew). Here…
Hell Dogs Over England
In the current (September 2019) issue of Aeroplane Monthly, here, artist Ian Bott and I have out latest ‘Briefing File’ feature on the defences against the V-1 bomb in 1944. While researching the history, it became evident that the comfort of hindsight has stripped away the fact that at the time, no-one really knew what…
Fighting Fuel
Today’s Poster, an unusual topic for the blog so far, though a common war theme, featuring an exhortation to conserve fuel for the war effort. But here it’s the Nazi German war effort: ‘Spare Gas für die Rüstung’ : ‘Save Gas for Weapons’ by Willy Petzold (1885-1978). The composition is interesting, the domestic gas ring…
3,000 km Across the Atlantic
Today’s Poster. Commemorating Italo Balbo’s 1930 flight of twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats from Orbetello Airfield, Italy to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 17 December 1930 and 15 January 1931. The poster is listed as from 1931 – I.G.A.P. Roma, 98 cm x 140 cm, artist : Umberto Di Lazzaro. This is where the term…
Story of Some Sticks
Something not often seen in detail. This is the Italian Fascist symbol cut from the fuselage of an unnamed Italian Regia Aeronautica aircraft during World War Two and kept as a trophy by an RAAF airman, and previously on display at the RAAF Museum Point Cook. (Excuse the lighting hot spots in the image.) Captured…
Stuka! One – Shiny
Here’s something you don’t see every day. A full size model (FSM) replica of the iconic German Blitzkrieg too the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber. Here in the sculpture garden of Burghley House, in the UK. As reported recently in Militaria & History, it ‘is called Down Two Earth and is an 11m…
Want to buy a warplane?
Today’s advertisement seems standard enough. The interesting thing is it’s an advertisement from a German company offering the Henschel Hs 126 military observation aircraft in Flight, the British published aviation magazine, in 1938. Less than two years later British airmen would be attacking the type in Blitzkreg of May 1940. Were Henschel serious about sales,…
Massed Mercs
A wartime advertisement by Mercedes Benz. What’s interesting, I think is the style and approach is similar to many other advertisements, showing the massed ranks for the company’s vehicles (here the half track and staff cars from the company, and the Heinkel He 111 bombers powered by Daimler Benz engines). However, the knowledge that the…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 