Starting one of the early ones.

Starting one of the early ones.

Starting a biplane.

Old Picture of the Day: British Imperial Airways

Old Picture of the Day: British Imperial Airways

Recently we posted the British Airways television advertisement that features their old aircraft. Here's another example of aircraft from the dawn of commercial aviation.

Old Picture of the Day: British Imperial Airways:

Quite the plane. I'd frankly be afraid to fly in it, but in its day it was no doubt quite the advancement. Of course, flying in those days was a real rarity for most travelers.

Starting one of the early ones.

Starting one of the early ones.

Starting a biplane.

The Star Duster

The Star Duster

The Star Duster, Natrona County Airshow, 1985. This was a biplane built by Norm Weiss of Casper Wyoming, a Casper College professor.

Bombed Out Refinery, Nagoya Japan.

Bombed Out Refinery, Nagoya Japan. Early 1950s

A photograph taken by my father in Nagoya Japan, depicting refinery damage from World War Two.

Boeing C-17 Globemaster III

C-17 Globemaster III. Click for Larger

This is the C-17 Globemaster III, a larger military transport aircraft.

This specific one, serial 0185, is a  Boeing C-17A Lot XII Globemaster II, and is named "Spirit of America". The "0" in front of "185" may indicate a ten year old aircraft.

British Airways - Our advert 2011: To Fly. To Serve.

British Airways - Our advert 2011: To Fly. To Serve.

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Normally I wouldn't post an advertisement, but this one is just so well done.

F/A-18D

All of these are the same F/A-18-D. CLick for full size.

F/A-18D.

The  F/A-18 is a modern, supersonic, and Aircraft Carrier capable fighter/attack aircraft (F/A). It is still in service primarily with the US Navy and US Marine Corps, but also with the Royal Australian Air Force and the Spanish Air Force. 

This was at the Natrona County Airport airshow in 2006. I've got a lot more photos from that airshow, but I wont put them up all at once.

P-51C "Betty Jane"

P-51C "Betty Jane"

This is the Dual-Seat P-51C Mustang "Betty Jane". I'm not sure if it has the original Packard engine or not (the Allison wasn't fully introduced until the D model), but I saw it fly in the airshow when it had a fuel system malfunction and had to land to get repaired. It took off again later that day.

Very pretty plane.

Osa's Ark - A strange Plane

Osa's Ark

I was looking through pictures I took to find an interesting picture to start off the blog. I think this fits nicely.

This is a Sikorsky S-38. A quote gleamed from it's Wikipedia Page explains it nicely.

"The Sikorsky S-38 was an American twin-engined 8-seat amphibious aircraft. It was sometimes called 'The Explorer's Air Yacht' and was Sikorsky's first widely produced amphibious flying boat which in addition to serving successfully for Pan American Airways and the U.S. Army, also had numerous private owners who received notoriety for their exploits."

This particular aircraft (this might actually be a replica, not sure) is the "Osa's Ark", which belonged to Martin an Osa Johnson, two American explorers. There is a whole gallery of original photographs of this plane here.

Flying back from Tulsa

Flying back from Tulsa

Sunrise over Colorado, Kansas, or Oklahoma.

Wyoming

Flying back from Tulsa 

This is another one of those topics which relate to the massive change in transportation we've witnessed over the past century. As followers of this blog know (okay, there are not followers, it's just me) this blog is attempting to focus on the first part of the 20th Century, and look at that era, but we do occasionally stray into more recent ones for comparison purposes as well.

This topic nicely illustrates these changes.

On Sunday I flew down to Tulsa, which is the second time in the past three months I've visited Tulsa (very nice town, by the way, in my view). This time, I left Casper around noon and flew via United Airlines to Denver Colorado. I had a three hour lay over in Denver, and then flew on to Tulsa, arriving about 8:00 p.m. their time. I worked in Tulsa the next day, and then I flew back yesterday morning, leaving Tulsa about 6:30 am. I was back in my office about 10:00 am, local time.

Okay no big deal, right?

Well, take this back a century and lets do the same trip, for the same purpose.

Now, granted, a person in Casper Wyoming would be pretty unlikely to make such a business trip to Tulsa in 1911. That's illustrative of the change right there. Hardly anyone would do that unless there was a very significant reason to do so. Given the region, I don't doubt that this did sometimes occur, but it would be infrequent. By the 1930s, however, such a trip would have been much more likely.

In either event, such a trip would have been by train, not plane (plane is a theoretical possibility for the 30s, but mostly theoretical). What would that have entailed. Well, it would have started with boarding the train downtown here in Casper, probably early Sunday morning, and then making a series of train transfers all day long. You'd probably sleep in the train at night. Maybe you'd have to leave on Saturday, particularly if you intended to start work on Monday.

You'd still stay over Monday night, as I did, but you'd re-board a train on Tuesday morning, and spend all day traveling back.

Perhaps all this doesn't seem as dramatic of change to you, as to me, but it is significant. What we now do in a matter of hours was then done in terms of days. I still had time to myself Sunday morning, and worked most of Monday here in my office. That, at least, would have been different.

What about plane travel, when that became possible? I'm not sure when Casper received regular air traffic, but I believe it would have been some point in the 1930s. I have no idea what the travel patterns were like, but it sure would have been a lot slower. Could you fly from Casper to Tulsa in a day? Perhaps, but I'd guess it would have been pretty much an all day type of deal.