The Vickers Viastra

The Viastra was a nifty addition to the skies of Australia when it arrived in the early 1930’s. Operated by West Australia Airways from 1931-36, it was eclipsed by more capable aircraft.

Great ad from Roehm & Haas. Though a German company, R&H also had a plant in the USA. Both operations made a fortune as manufacturers of Plexiglas. The company is still around today.

Seems that the Dornier Do.18 wasn’t made out of any old metal. Nope, they used “Ulminium.”

The Focke-Wulf FW 189 had a rather pleasing design. Undoubtedly this is one the cooler looking aircraft ads I’ve ever seen.

“Stukas”

The Ju 87 Stuka was famous enough that Junkers could just blurt out the aircraft’s name in their advertisements.

The P-35 was a spiffy little plane

Compared to what the Air Corps had flown for a pursuit aircraft just a few years before, the P-35 represented a quantum leap in aviation technology.

Ju 90

Billing itself as the “Koenigin der luft” (Queen of the air), the Junkers Ju 90 was a pretty decent aircraft. Most were pressed into service with the Luftwaffe as transports.

Fleet Aircraft

Ya just gotta love the ads they cooked up in the 1930’s. Fleet Aircraft inc. in Buffalo NY had some of the best.

Another spiffy ad

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For $20,000 bucks you too can be in the vanguard of future aviation

These gotta be good struts…

Overnight, Charles Lindbergh was the omnipotent god of all things aviation. If his plane had Aerol Struts, then you knew those were the best struts in the galaxy.

Pretty tough to argue with Pennzoil on this one

The A-36 Apache

Though often thought of as the same plane with a different name, the A-36 Apache differed considerably from its more common P-51 Mustang cousin.

Fairey’s Metal Airscrews

The aircraft may look ridiculous…

…but Mr. Claude Grahame-White was a serious engineer and an accomplished pilot. The Aero-Limousine seen here didn’t catch on, but other Grahame-White designs did.

Rohrbach Metall Flugzeugbau

Located in Berlin, Rohrbach were innovators in the use of metal in early aircraft designs. They also paid for some great ad work.

F4U Corsair Fans May Disagree…

…but the aircraft sure looked a lot better with a “bubble” type canopy.

Barling NB-3

The Nicholas-Beazley Barling NB-3 made a lot of claims, including that it was “spin-proof.” Not “virtually” spin-proof, but the whole works. Whatever their claims, they had nifty ads.

Inland Aviation

Inland Aviation of Kansas was only around a few years, but they built some excellent aircraft such as the Inland Sport seen here. One of its principal features was side-by-side seating. You knew the modern age had arrived when whatever it was you invented for transporting people from one place to another gained the ability for two of those people to sit side-by-side. Apparently, sitting next to your sweetie also keeps one’s hair in place — even when you’re going so fast blurry lines indicating speed are emanating from your windscreen.

A pair of small posters announcing big news in 1930. Meet me in St. Louis at the World Air Fair, the International Aircraft Exposition. There’s also the All-American Airshow in Detroit. Added bonus: you only have to wait six weeks between the two shows.

The aircraft is a Lockheed Hudson. Great plane. The car is a LaSalle convertible. Sweet vehicle. Who’s the man? Hall Hibbard. As one of the great designers and engineers for Lockheed, Hibbard obviously knew a nice car when he saw one.

There was an Arrow

A.V. Roe (AVRO) Canada had a lot to boast about in the Fall – Winter edition of Horizons magazine. The new CF-105 Arrow had just rolled out the door, and who wasn’t optimistic? Unfortunately for those who worked at AVRO, the happy scenes depicted in these photos were not going to last for long. The rest is history.

The analogy is a bit strained, but I get the idea: a Chase “Velmo”, excuse me, VELMO seat, is just one big Barcalounger in the sky.

Things were looking pretty good for the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation in the late 20’s and early 30’s. The first two photos are from a Goodyear booklet from 1931. The ad dates to 1929.

This guy lives like Bruce Wayne. Wise choice with the aircraft; a Spartan was a pretty good machine. The $5675 price tag translates to $81,000 today.