Nostalgia

Anyway – opening the pages of the 1945 FLYING magazines made us wonder if everything in the copies really came true, even though we’ve been in flying orbit for more than 40 years.

The Fairchild Packet had just been announced in a full-page ad sandwiched between exhortations to buy War Bonds and speed Victory.

Kollsman instruments were all the rage; readable aircraft; in the family garage and driven to the nearest airport with wings folded, were being advertised.

In the light aircraft field, the Bellanca Cruisair featured largely as desirable property, and on the next page Consolidated Vultee made a great blah about their Liberator Express – Australia and back in 94 hours 20 minutes, carrying spares, men and material!

There were flying machines like the Pitcairn two-plane autogiro with a tractor prop and fold-back main rotor blades; the foolproof Stearman-Hammond with an un-spinnable reputation – alas, it proved too costly; John Geisse’s proposal for a high-performance light aircraft with no fewer than ten small props blowing air over the entire wing and controlling boundary layer.

There’s an absorbing article on combat fatigue – known to the Americans as Focke-Wulf Jitters – and how hospitalised and burnt-out airmen were given practical therapy. From memory, we called it ‘twitch’ or LMF in the Royal Air Force before combat fatigue was recognised as a real thing – Lack of Moral Fibre. It was a disgrace to have THAT stamped on your Service record when all the trouble was that you had just had enough. . .

One was already being urged to buy aircraft like the Taylorcraft side-by-side light aircraft, the Globe Swift, Luscombe Silvaire, Laister-Kauffam Yankee Doodle glider, Piper was running full-page adverts showing how Tom taught Mary to fly so easily in a Cub . . .

May ’45’s FLYING extolled the virtue of the new Stinson Voyager 125; Beech Aircraft ran a photo of an AT-10 twin-engine advanced trainer sporting a butterfly tail which it said, had interesting possibilities!

American military might take up a large part of most issues we saw – How We Won The War, etc. . . with some fine action shots and layouts showing typical bombing mission patterns and results from photo-reconnaissance.

Northrop’s Black Widow comes in for a fair share of advertising, plus an account of what happened when a Black Widow test pilot ran out of fuel over his home airfield and alighted minus hydraulics.

There are little gems sandwiched in the pages, like the tiny German rotary-wing kite designed to be towed by a U-boat. With RAF Coastal Command catching U-boats snorkelling or schnorkelling, the German High Command put the little whizzer into temporary action. What happened when the high-flying spotter saw a hostile aircraft or surface unit was that he figuratively yelled, “Achtung!” into his air-to-sub phone, abandoned his spinning kite by parachute and was picked up before the U-boat crash-dived.

There are also photos of exciting ‘new’ types in both civil and military fields, like the Piper Skycoupe; the experimental Northrop XP-56, a flying wing with a radial pusher engine driving contra-props; the US Navy’s Coronado PB2Y-5H flying boat converted to medivac duties.

Then there was the General Motors XP-75, a fighter with two tri-blade contra props driven by shafting from a behind-the cockpit engine like your Kingcobra

And in the middle of all the Thunderbolts with clipped wings, and a captured Dakota with German markings, is a tiny two-place called Model A! That, and a little Johnson Rocket.

Aeronca was getting into the advertising act in this issue, too, as was Europe. There was even an advertisement for the two place Funk with a 75 hp motor up front, designed to be made in Funk’s Coffeyville, Kansas, plant.

One thing we didn’t know from our Middle East position during WW II was that German troops called the P-38 Lightning ‘Der Gabelschwanz Teufel. ‘ The Fork-Tailed Devil. Sounds a bit of a mouthful when surrounded by Lightnings. . .

November 1945 issue really went to town – it had a fine action shot of a Shooting Star on the front cover; one of the really newies. . .

Beech ran a full-page advertisement extolling the virtues of their Staggerwing as far as dependability goes.

There was also news of the neat little Midwest Mercury two-place lightie with a 75 hp motor up front. Next to this picture was a type we’d almost forgotten about – the lumbering but quite magnificent Short Shetland, a marriage of Sunderland and Stirling technology and parts.

In the Classifieds one could find the odd bargain; read some of the types offered for peanuts in those days and compare them with today’s prices – if you can get these types:

Stinson Gullwing; Rearwin Speedster; Stearmans, Ryans, Fairchilds by the bucketful; Aeronca Chief; Monocoupe; Interstate L-6; someone wanted to trade a Waco for a Rearwin Cloudster in mint condition . . .

And of course, there were literally thousands of ex-Service fighter, bomber and transport pilots looking for jobs.

Cessna came up with an advertisement in the December 1945 issue of FLYING, telling you why high wing design was better than Brand X. Wichita’s logic included using the entire wing and cockpit top surface for lift; better downward visibility, and the old story about sitting in the shade and being protected from rain and snow when you got out at the other end of your fliqht . . .

The military section featured more wrap-ups on mass bombing raids, in the European theatre. It was interesting to read that total RAF-USAF tonnage distribution in 1942-1945 was dominated by 482,437 tons on cities, with 451,442 tons being dropped on what was called Transportation and Misc. Military and naval targets got 261,836 tons dropped on them.

Looking back isn’t what AUSTRALIAN AVIATION is all about. But we print this article in full realisation that several generations have emerged since those copies of FLYING came hot off the press, and the Hiroshima-Nakasaki bombs were still capturing headlines, a nation had been beaten into submission on the other side of the world, men and women in uniform were beginning to wonder what peace would be like – and technicians were designing big and small aircraft with enthusiasm and still-pioneering spirit.

One wonders if we’ve really changed in nearly 40 years of aviation?