Today we are lucky to have a Friday the 13th, so here’s a look at a particularly unusual nose art. We start with a rare wartime colour shot of the nose art on Handley Page Halifax LV907 on public display on the heavily bombed Oxford Street, London. The text: “As ye sew so shall ye…
Tag: Safety
Goats in Clouds
Today’s image; one of the classics – both for the joke, and for the always great effort by the inimitable Gary Larson of The Far Side. ‘Rock stuffed clouds’ are one of aviation’s least good things, and goats are just a cherry on the top of an indigestible desert of a metaphor over extended. As…
Wemendum
Today’s posters follow yesterday’s poster about building the aircraft – here it’s about missing parts. Delays in manufacture were a major issue during the Second World War, and while a huge number of aircraft (among other weapons and equipment) were recycled, there were delays and issues there too. So here we have two Allied powers…
Is it a Bird?
Today’s 1943 poster from the artist ‘Percival’, as well as making editors twitch with some unconventional punctuation, picks up on a challenging visual theme – the question of recognition. Anyone operating aircraft with the Royal Navy in World War Two will be familiar with their ‘shoot first and ask after’ approach. The aircraft is one…
Return of the Imperial
Here’s a pair and a quintet, with a lesson for those doing this job – check every copy found, in books and online. Several of the well known, even famous posters we’ve seen here exist in variant forms – sometimes with different text, sometimes with different backgrounds – or more, as we shall see. It’s…
Frights in Finland
Today’s posters from Finland are rather eerie civil defence ones from World War Two. In Suomi, it reads: “Ilmasta uhkaa vaara! Kaikki kansalaiset väestönsuojelutyöhön!” or “Danger Threatens from the sky! Take Air Raid Precautions”. The figure is obviously intended to seem protective, sheltering a blue clad family from the bomber aircraft that looks somewhat like…
Metal Fist Thunderbolt
Today the cover of a pilot’s type instructional manual, here the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. What makes it of interest is the decision to create a remarkable mailed fist background to the profile drawing of the machine. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Via Matt Savage, Mach One Photography.
Bam – Break
Today’s poster is one of an important genre, the war pilot instructional type. A German Messerschmitt Bf 109 pilot attacking a well advised American Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Clear, blunt advice, including a pixie on a cloud. Memorable? They certainly hoped so. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Internet find.
Boston Ditch
We’re all familiar with the aircraft safety card, with their carefully crafted version of what may happen – and what you should do – in a ditching where the aircraft has to land on water. Today’s poster is an earlier incarnation, from a military aircraft that was far more likely for the crew to need…
Posters of Interesting Times
Today’s Posters are a set of Chinese aviation instructional posters, an to western eyes, a very different mix of style, content and approach to anything we’ve seen here before. This one below of ‘Active Air Defences’, with the Smithsonian’s source detail here. Is it meant as a ‘how to behave?’, or ‘how you are being…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 