Beyond the limits In part one of this series, artists of the early 20th Century imagined voids in their illustrations of primordial airliners to demonstrate the comfort and complexity of mankind’s latest leap forward. By the late 1930s, however, and certainly by the end of World War II, aviation was becoming vastly more sophisticated. Engineering, on the other hand, remained tethered to the two-dimensional blueprints … Continue reading Cutaways 2
Under the skin These days, 3D CAD and sophisticated rendering tools mean creating images that aren’t rooted in reality is a breeze. For most commercial applications, it’s the norm. For example, I follow developments in electric aviation fairly actively, and the fact that last night’s beer coaster brainwave can be a fully rendered, photo-realistic artefact by lunchtime is clearly a real bonus for entrepreneurs, founders … Continue reading Cutaways
In 1963, the CIA and US Navy began working together to adapt the Lockheed U-2 spy plane for carrier operations. This is the story of bringing the US’s most difficult aircraft to land to aviation’s most difficult landing. Continue reading Trapping the Dragon Lady
The story of C-54 Skymaster production at the Douglas Chicago factory is extraordinary in itself. But how they produced their very first aircraft – and how – quickly is simply next-level. Continue reading War comes to Chicago
Orion rising The first thing you notice is its size. In fact, the most common reaction is ‘Oh. Wow!’ Although it’s hardly enormous by modern standards, the Lockheed Orion’s ancestry in the Electra turboprop is a vivid reminder that even small airliners are not small aeroplanes. To walk from SAAM’s darkened restoration workshop into a display hangar that is dominated by a retired RAAF AP-3C … Continue reading Home for a hunter
Messing about in planes This won’t be news to TAVAS members any more, but a couple of weekends back I had the enormous pleasure of hanging out with my mate Andrew at the TAVAS Museum at Caboolture, north of Brisbane. (Plus other shenanigans, which we needn’t go into here.) TAVAS Museum I’d like to stop here, in case your boss comes in and you have … Continue reading (G)olden days
Orchard Place Of course it wasn’t what I set out to do. I’d actually thought it would be interesting to go through some old American aviation magazines and compare the advertising from late 1938 to late 1943 and then mid-1945… I wanted to see how things changed as the Depression economy recovered but before war in Europe had begun; then in the depths of WW2 … Continue reading Early Days at O’Hare
Duty Cycle I spent the other Sunday fulfilling my quarterly obligation to perform a day’s desk duty at the South Australian Aviation Museum. Actually, ‘obligation’ is hardly fair. As the only thing expected of SAAM volunteers apart from a modest annual membership fee, I see my quarterly desk duty as excellent value for money. A Sunday spent greeting visitors and chatting with a couple of … Continue reading Aviation Museum
Maelstrom Eighth Bomber Command launched 969 missions between August 1942 and May 1945 and, as the force built up, over 2,000 fully loaded four-engine bombers would be swirling upwards through the fog and cloud above their bases in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. That’s 2,000 unguided aircraft in an area about the size of Greater New York City or the Blue Mountains in NSW. A … Continue reading Raising the colours
The art of science Apparently I’m not the only one to have noticed the photogenic beauty of wind tunnels and what goes on inside them. So it seems appropriate to celebrate the beautiful images that have been captured in wind tunnels over the decades. Now, this isn’t a study of wind tunnels or their history, or even of aerodynamics. It’s simply a collection – and … Continue reading Light as air
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