CoolPix: Convair Ad Circa 1953 With B-36 (Orange Paint!)
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 08:29AM 
(click pic for hi-res) Awesome aerospace-diversity Convair ad circa 1953
Fear not, AirPigz HAS NOT gone 'orange paint' for every post already... I just knew that today I'd be posting this sweet Convair ad from back in the day, and I figured preceding it yesterday with some extra Convair-related orange paint was gonna be a great lead-in. Be sure to open this CoolPix artwork up big and take it all in, and take note of the line drawing of the P5Y in the blue area at the top. That's an amazing airplane that I will tell you I knew nothing about. Never even heard of it before seeing this ad - I have sooo much to learn! I'll have a detailed post on the P5Y (aka R3Y Tradewind) before long with some amazing images.
This fabulous ad from around 1953 definitely put Convair's extremely robust aerospace diversity on display! Wow, those post WWII years were pretty incredible! But it's not just the swanky retro graphics of amazing flying machines that make this image so retro to me, it's also the fact that the photoshop restoration of this image was done by a guy that I actually went to private school with in California back in the late 60's for 1st thru 3rd grades. It was my work on AirPigz that got us back in contact after not seeing each other since I left that school in the 3rd grade!
Chris Bryan and I not only went to the same school, but we both had dad's who flew for United and we were both pretty hardcore avgeeks at a very young age. Chris runs the really cool website BoxArtDen that has an incredible collection of box art from old-school plastic models that have been digitally restored. So much of that old art is off-the-scale cool to look at... and Chris loves to focus on the avgeek aspect of it. Be sure to take some time and go check it all out.
I also found out a few years back when Chris and I got back in contact that he has a younger brother Hal, who I had never met when we were kids. Turns out that Hal and I had been emailing each other right at that time concerning issues related to AirPigz and the EAA... Hal is the online community manager at the EAA! (wow, it really is a small world! But, as a comedian once said, "I'd hate to have to paint it!" : )
Thanx Chris for sharing this sweet old Convair ad that includes some orange paint!
Reader Comments (4)
In the lower left of the Convair ad is an image of the MX-774. This test vehicle was only flown three times - all at White Sands. This was about a half-scale V-2. However, this was a rocket designed by engineers at an aircraft company. In particular, the work of Charlie Bossart on making the fuel tanks integral with the airframe and pressurized like a balloon to maintain rigidity. This technique was used on the Atlas rocket skin. This was a welded stainless steel balloon that was inflated above ambient pressure as soon as it was pulled from the welding fixtures to maintain its shape. Getting these long continuous welds right required lots of surface prep, cleaning, and displacing water that was on the surface of the metal. One of the welding contractors experimented with lots of Water Displacer formulas before settling on Water Displacer 40. Yup, WD-40.
JD- thanx for the added info : )
Thanks so much, Martt!
Don't forget the C-240. (probably a C-340 in the pic as the first 240s had the airstair on the starboard side. The 340 met new regulations to load pax on port side.)
What an airplane. First tricycle to compete against the DC-3. I worked on a few C-240s with those awesome radials. Got my hat blown off more than once by backfires standing under the wing waiting to disengage the APU. We used to ask the captain if he wanted us to check the gas and fill up the oil.