EVERYBODY knows that!

[rain_gryphon]

The Picture of the Day, so far as I'm concerned. It's a Handley-Page type 42 airliner, being refuelled in India sometime in the 1930s. It's got a flag on top, and what appear to be bus style windows that can slide open. One supposes they didn't fly the flag while in the air, although I've seen paintings of exhibition flyers doing just that. They may have opened the windows in flight on hot days, though. It's a low altitude plane, and only went 100mph or so.

It looks like they just landed on an open field outside the walled city. If you look, you can see the ground crew dumping gasoline into the open topped tubs, and men operating the manual pumps that send the fuel through the hoses in the foreground. They wanted four-bladed props, but apparently had to settle for bolting two wooden props one atop the other. There was a time when just going somewhere in an airplane was an adventure in itself.

You can see the plane in flight here. It looks like something from TaleSpin. There's this neat period between the Wars when big planes went from being contraptions to being proper vehicles, and this comes from close to the end of that transition.

*****

Going places by air used to be more fun than it is now, even in my lifetime. I remember when the jetway was just at the really big airports, and you generally had to use those rolling stairs, and walk across the tarmac. I honestly liked that better, I think, especially at night or in the rain. There's something neat about deplaning onto the field, and hearing and smelling the airport at work.

The last time I went to San Jose I had to use the stairs. They had the stairs, and the yellow and white striped canvas walkway, which was just neat. It felt like being in a 1960s movie.

*****

Does anyone know this fellow?

He dressed in what looks to me like a home-made Tiger suit, then climbed to the top of a lighthouse to protest pornography. He's got a website at http://4myduke.com/ where he'd like to sell you his book.

*****

I've been on a "Franklin" watching spree of late. For some reason it's really captured my imagination. Beaver reminds me a great deal of myself :)

Comments

Fox!!

[swift-fox.livejournal.com]

Swift loves Fox! :) Go figure. But yeah, Franklin is a kids show I can watch without having to either brush my teeth every commercial or losing interest in the first 5 minutes. "Between the Lions" was a favorite too.

Neat info on that old plane. You never see one of those on Indiana Jones. :) Always PanAm Clippers. :)

*Hugs*

Swifty

Re: Fox!!

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I can see Fox in you, yeah.

CS Lewis observed that if a story's not worth reading when you're 40, it wasn't worth reading when you were 10. I think that applies to movies and TV too. Franklin's just so emotionally real - you can believe in the characters and their motivations. That's more than can be said for prolly 99% of the mindless crap on TV, let alone kids' shows. The stories are exceptioanlly well-crafted as stories too. There's typically a foreshadowing of the episode's problem, with Franklin on the receiving end, then the main theme is developed, this time with Franklin on the giving end. It's done artfully too, and the audience is never beaten over the head with either the moral or the story structure. :)


PanAm Clippers.

In the late '30s, flying boats like the Clipper were the future of long-haul aviation. Most major American cities except St. Louis had harbours, as did many major European and Asian cities. Flying boats could land and take off without the need for expensive airports. They just used the already existing passenger facilities at the port. Transcontinental service was coast to coast on the huge flying boats, then smaller planes like the type 42 provided inland service from smaller airports or open fields.

After the War, of course, there were heavy-duty airports all over the world, plus the US had thousands of surplus DC3s to get rid of cheaply. That's why we use land-based passenger liners today.

Re: Fox!!

[xolo.livejournal.com]

PanAm Clippers

A nice summary page with pictures and descriptions of various types of flying boats. http://airlines.afriqonline.com/features/flyboats.htm

[princebambi.livejournal.com]

Heh! That's a rather phallic-looking aircraft there. ;-)

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

LOL - There's a flag planted in it though, which looks rather painful. ;-)

[xolo.livejournal.com]

The marketting department refers to that as the 'pleasure nub'.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it vibrates nicely once the engines get going, too.

[derechodragon.livejournal.com]

I once caught a glimpse of some video of the Concorde taxiing before or after some diplomatic flight with two large flags flying from masts mounted above the corners of the cockfit windows. Surely they were not there for the flight itself, but I think it would have been interesting to watch if they had been left there for it. I have doubts that back then they made flags that could handle a 100mph airspeed, though today you certainly could get one.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Don't underestimate silk. It might well stand up to 100mph winds, at least for a while. I really doubt if the flag was there during the flight, though. I'm left to wonder if someone had to climb up on top of the plane to put it there, or if there was some sort of door in the roof where they ran the flag up after they landed? I'm guessing the latter.

[derechodragon.livejournal.com]

Point taken about silk, that's parachute material after all, and that does appear to be real silk flag. A solid silk banner would probably last but the stitching around the canton would be the weakness.

I do notice that the flag mast is not apparent in any other depictions of this aircraft that I could find. I'm also curious about the smaller device near the flagpole, wondering what it is.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

http://www.flightpaths.com.au/gfx/content_preview/hp42.gif shows one with a flag. I'm guessing this is a later photo, since they've got metal 4-bladed propellors.

Here's a picture of a model with a flag in place: http://www42.tok2.com/home/avionroad/UK%20Civil/hp42.JPG

In a triumph for low humour, the model picture is linked from a Japanese website, and the link is marked "Handrey Page" http://www42.tok2.com/home/avionroad/British%20Civil.html

None of the in-flight pictures show flags, so I'm guessing they ran that up when they were on the ground. http://www.goana.com.au/Gossips/Gossip20/HP42.jpg shows one warming up without the flag displayed too.

I've no idea what that instrument is. It seems to be there on all of the planes. There're pitot tubes mounted low in front, so it's probably not an airspeed indicator (my first guess). I wonder if it might be some kind of wind-vane to tell the pilot windspeed and direction prior to takeoff? That'd be a good thing to have when you had to operate out of makeshift fields. I know a couple pilots - I'll ask them what they think.

[derechodragon.livejournal.com]

I would agree that the underside device is likely the airspeed indicator and the upper device would be a windvane and anemometer for use when you might be taking off from a location bereft of having a weather station to provide that information for you. Those are also things you'd probably rather not leave atop the fuselage while in flight lest they suffer undue wear and tear. Perhaps both the flagpole and the weathervane were retractable from inside?

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

I think some of the pilots' windows on the Concorde could be opened. They were protected by the moveable nosecone when the plane was moving at speed, so they didn't need to really stand up to supersonic flight on their own. Just the lack of pressure at 50K feet.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I think most of the planes I've seen generally have an openable side window in the cockpit.

[derechodragon.livejournal.com]

Which movie was it where George Kennedy opened one such window to drop a flare to decoy the heat-seeking missile that was rocketing toward them?