The last chronological post* of the blog features a very special item, and some of the fascinating complex background to it – the fictional Carreidas 160 supersonic bizjet. We start with an image of the Carreidas 160 in flight, but all is not what it seems, it’s an excellent creation from here. It was first…
Tag: Technology
They Who Look
In World War Two, the British aircraft parts company Helliwells used a series of images of a nude female model to promote their work – no other evident reason beyond the obvious one! However it certainly ensured their advertising stood out from the rest. They often (but not always) used the tagline ‘They Who Look…
Real Imperial
The Handley Page HP 42 airliners of Imperial Airways are a familiar sight in the iconography of the interwar airways system as we’ve seen here – their interiors less so. What aspects and details can you identify in the images? Based (as my colleague Juanita Franzi explored so well in her paper at the Aviation…
Indy’s Matte Boat
Of course everyone’s favourite archaeologist, Indiana Jones, travels in a flying boat. In this case in the first film, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. But how? Here’s a web page covering a ‘then and now’ of the Short Solent Mk.III that stood in for the extinct Pan Am Boeing 314. It’s the survivor at the…
School Bus
Today’s Poster is an advertisement for Farman’s pilot school. Farman were, of course, an aircraft manufacturer, but also an airline operator, and, as here a flying instruction organisation. This was a common pre- Great War combination, as well as straight afterwards, as here, and notably with Boeing in America operating an airline, but this was…
Caravelle
Today we have an advertising theme featuring the unusual windows of the Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle medium range airliner. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Posters, found online, photograph from here.
Wing Badges n’ Things
Today we have an accidental product of my job, reporting on aviation preservation worldwide. Relatively recently, two major transport, technology and heritage collections on opposite sides of the world changed their logos. The Shuttleworth Collection, in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, UK, adopted a newly designed brand logo: I immediately though it seemed familiar (though there was no…
Firebomb Fritz
A wartime British defensive propaganda character (mostly forgotten today) was ‘Firebomb Fritz’. Here in colour: …and here in black and white, both by Reginald Mount. (Original UK National Archives caption: “Fritz in Nazi bomber” by Reginald Mount, 1942 Catalogue ref: INF 3/1421. The cartoon depicts determined (but subservient) looking German air force men flying towards…
See Clearly
Today’s poster and photograph seems clear enough wartime recruitment propaganda, but there’s a bit more to them than meets the eye. Here a woman factory worker is fitting a mount to a clear acrylic dome structure. It’s a nose cone for an American bomber, in this case a Douglas built Boeing B-17F and her head…
Travolta’s Smallest Airliner?
The one and only John Travolta (just arrived in Australia as I write) well known as a film star, sometimes known as a pilot, and an owner of several large aircraft, including his own Qantas colours bedecked Boeing 707 – yes, a real, full-size airliner. This is due to be donated to the Historic Aircraft…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 