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 No Really Bigger Is Better [image credit - bbcimg.co.uk] In postwar Britain there was considerable money, time, and effort spent on trying to keep the colonies nearby. The Brits went to some absurd lengths to create non-stop flights to her farthest territories utilizing aircraft such as this one. Continue reading Flying Boats – The Princess Is At The Other Castle  Top Gun Would Have Been Much Different This Way. [image source wikipedia.org] The British were looking for ways to modernize their fighter force and, being from an island, were sure that the water was the key.
In our continuing look at the Air & Space Museum’s Fly Now! poster collection, I present to you some more fine flying boat and floatplane posters from the early days of air travel. Once, the seaplane was seen as the natural way for air travel to work. People were already used to traveling to seaports, and little infrastructure had to be built to support them. The planes just needed a nice calm stretch of water. Once the modern airliners like the DC-2 came into existence, and opened up air travel across the country, the passenger seaplane began its slow decline. No longer did people have to take a long train ride to get to the seaport/airport, the land based airport could be right in their hometown. These posters date from the good old days, so let’s take a look! 
In order to break up the Fly Now! poster collection of the Smithsonian Air & Space museum into manageable sections, I tried to find some general categories which I could group the images into. One such category is a type of plane that has always tickled my fancy–the flying boat. Starting today, and over the next few Sundays, we’ll be focusing on these gentle giants. The first group up highlights Imperial Airways, an early British commercial long range air transport company, operating from 1924 to 1939. This airline serviced not only much of Europe, but also the Empire routes to South Africa, India and the Far East. Continue reading Air & Space Archives: Imperial Flying Boats 
 Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines Yesterday on 7 March 2011, the Space Shuttle Discovery departed from the International Space Station to begin her last de-orbit from space, and is scheduled to land in Florida on Wednesday afternoon, March 9 at 11:57 a.m. EST. That’s 8:57am for you west coasters. Her next flight will be atop the special 747 Jumbo-Jet Shuttle Carrier while being delivered to a lucky and yet to be announced museum, where she will be enshrined to be admired for generations to come. However, some of you in the northern states and Europe still have one last chance to see her in her natural environment, as she de-orbits overhead on the way home. It is quite easy to pick out even with the bare eyes, even in brightly lit cities. All you need to know is where and when to look. Continue reading Watch Discovery Fly Overhead, for the very last time – Tonight!  "Up, up and away! But only up a little bit! Okay, that's enough!" In yesterday’s Startup, we talked about the Spruce Goose, a massive undertaking that never fully realized its true potential. Turns out, it wasn’t the first giant seaplane to learn this lesson. |
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