Here’s a few pages from a book from 1931*, when roundels were RED white and blue, thanks to the hand tinting colour process used. We take full colour printing for granted these days, but it wasn’t that long ago it was a big deal to have any colour at all – this book has only…
Tag: Inter-war
Sleek Caudron & Renault
When forced to support an aircraft maker, your car manufacturer has every justification in advertising their car in association – including using the pilot of both, here Raymond Delmotte. The Caudron C.461 is seen here with the Renault cabriolet, and both shows the fashions of extreme streamlining are as much fashion as they are pure…
Messerschmitt Hands
Today a photograph, very much in the tradition of atmospheric art photos of the thirties. This is of the leading edge slat on a Messerschmitt Bf 109, or ‘‘Zwei Hände eines Arbeiters beim Arbeiten am Flügel eines Flugzeugs Messerschmitt Me 109.’ From 1940, the photographer is only listed as ‘Höss’, but the Bundesarchive search under…
The Pitcairn Possibility
Whenever I need to shoot, efficiently from the office to the cocktail party, to the golf course, then it’s my Pitcairn Autogiro that I reach for automatically. Because they’re ‘secure and practical for recreation and utility’, of course. But… If we go beyond the marketing spin from 1932, in fact they were reaching toward such…
Fortune 100
This is the 100th post on the blog. So here’s a cover from ‘Fortune’ magazine. Fortune is, of course, a US financial journal. This issue, from June 1940 comes from an era when much of the world was at war, except the USA, and is linking industry and communication (in the form of aviation) to…
Doodle Amelia
One from a special day on Google, a special ‘Google Doodle’ artwork featuring noted aviatrix Amelia Earhart. Here’s she’s seen boarding her Lockheed Vega, preserved in the Smithsonian collection, which incorporates the Google letters as the ‘registration’ and in her scarf. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Image from Google, screengrab from file.
Soviet Airwomen’s Training
A Soviet poster at the end of Women’s History Month today. A slightly rough translation of this 1931 poster’s strapline would be “Proletarian women! Master aviation equipment, go to school and technical colleges for advancing civil aviation!” The Communist revolution needed to enable such skills and enhance the capability of the population, but here, as…
Which Woman’s Wings?
Women’s History Month is nearly at an end. One oddity, here it looks like a great film, lots of American aircraft*. Except it’s not. The US film poster for the British film ‘They Flew Alone’ released in the US as ‘Wings and the Woman’, directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring his wife Anna Neagle. It’s…
Credible Comet?
These ‘trench art’ ashtrays are relatively common in junk shops and antique shops. This is to a degree because most of them are modern made, and vary enormously between the very convincing, and the dubious rubbish. This represents the pre-war de Havilland DH 88 Comet racer, reasonably convincingly though the casting as usual lacks credibility…
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,…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 