Above is one of the dullest, driest, least charming training films about airplanes that I’ve ever seen. I love it. If you’re enraptured by vintage aviation then you will too. If you’re not I suggest you watch it as an alternative to taking the Quaalude that you may not have
Did you know that actor/director/restauranteur/sailor/guy who-co-produced ‘The Sting’ Tony Bill was a serious pilot and aviation history buff? A master pilot and aerobatics flyer, he’s owned and flown an envy-producing bunch of vintage hangar-candy among which are a 1946 Globe Swift, a 1935 Aeronica Chief, a 1929 Parks P-2A bi-plane,
Smoking on airplanes was once okay. Hell, I participated in that challenging sport for quite a few years. But advertising smoking on planes is another thing entirely. Above is a late 1950s commercial for Winston cigarettes. Apparently this particular airline handed out mini-packs for you as gift favors–kind of like
Today is day one of ‘Sun ‘N Fun’, a huge civil aeronautics festival held every year in Florida. (It;s not the largest though–that would be ‘Air Venture’ in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin which I’m planning on attending this July). To mark the beginning of this week’s air fest I’m posting a
Meet the extraordinary female British aviation pioneer Pauline Gower. A writer as well as a pilot, Gower first flew with another British aviation pioneer Alan Cobham and was fascinated by flying. In 1931 she met Dorothy Spicer, with whom she established an air taxi service in Kent. She was one of
As a vintage aviation geek (actually I prefer the term ‘propellerhead’) I’m fascinated by the stray bits of old film that turn up featuring the then dashingly modern craft of flying and what was considered cutting edge stuff. The concept of the passenger plane was astonishing and terrifying to people
The astoundingly beautiful super-sonic aircraft known as the Concorde had its first commercial flight in 1976 and was retired in 2003. Why? Because of high operating costs, expensive travel prices and debris on a runway that resulted in a fatal crash killing all on board in 2003. (It wasn’t the
Take a look (and read the accompanying explanation) at yesterday’s blog entry. It’s a World War 2 pilot training film ”Learn and Live With Joe Instructor’, absolutely one of the most entertaining war movies ever made. To my dismay, the film ended rather abruptly, halting just as a plane was
Years ago I remember my father recounting to me a training film he and his fellow flight school students were asked (forced) to watch in which Guy Kibbee played an angel who admitted dead student pilots to a special place in heaven/hell, without knowing why. The flight instructor showed up
Recorded on May 26, 1927, just five days after Lindbergh’s arrival in Paris, ‘Lucky Lindy’ (posted below) was a major hit record and one that Lindbergh apparently loathed. He was more than a little surprised at the world-wide hoopla that greeted him upon landing and regarded much of it with