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1951 ... ready to slug it out!
... with the America grimly mired in Korea the inevitability of a war with the Soviet Union was on a lot of minds. Barely five years after the end of World War II it felt as if the Communist monolith headed by Stalin was pushing toward WW 3!
We should give credit to nuclear deterrence as keeping the world from getting into what would have been a conventional war as terrible as the one that had just finished. If the US had not had a monopoly on the A-bomb would the Soviets have pushed over all of Europe? How much safer and happier would Stalin have been with a secure empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific?
1950 ... sneaky Reds (Korea)
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1951 ... fill-er-up!
... XC-99 (cargo version of the B-36 bomber) imagined as a gigantic tanker airplane. Never happened. The first USAF tankers in service were converted B-29 Superfortresses. Then a bloated version of the B-29 the KC-97. All the while the prop driven tankers were way too slow for the early jets they were refueling making the procedure dangerous and cumbersome. In spite of adding jet pods to help the props the system did not find perfection until the 1957 introduction of the famous KC-135 all jet tanker. This was the military version of what would go on to become the Boeing 707; America's first jet airliner. The military and the nuclear deterrence came first. Tourists and businessmen had to wait another year (1958) for 707 and American jet-travel.
note: refueling passenger jets in flight was too dangerous and expensive to ever be seriously considered.
note: refueling passenger jets in flight was too dangerous and expensive to ever be seriously considered.
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1952 ... ooo- that's a big one!
... full concept painting for a 1952 issue of 'Weird Fantasy' comics. Love how the Hudson River is starting to fill in the crater.
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1958 ...sex, spark-plugs and missiles!
... leave it to Madison Avenue to infer that this winsome queen of domesticity will be waiting for you when you get home from a long day of planning on how to blow-up the world!
1951 ... dreams of atomic flight!
... still hard to wrap my head around the idea of no fuel being burned- just lots of hot air! Atomic reactors and airplanes do not mix. One is crazy heavy and bulky! The opposite of what you want an airplane to be! The idea of flying around forever on a handful of uranium pellets sounds very cool! But more efficient jet engines and (the less crazy idea) of transferring fuel from a tanker airplane won out.
Also; nobody really needs to fly around the world several times without landing. The need is to go to a destination; to visit or bomb. The need for this type of technology was short lived. Soon surpassed by the range and speed of missiles.
The more I look at Cold War nuclear war technology, the more I find myself repeating the phrase "it only has to work once!"
(note: this illustration clearly shows the British Saunders-Roe 'Princess' flying boat. Though obsolete before finished, it was of interest to American mad-scientists who saw it's vast size as possibly able to accommodate a nuclear power plant.)
... new super-hero?
... obviously; when exposed to radiation you will become gigantic, naked and emit an eerie blue glow!
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... a very big door!
... stumbled across this photo; perhaps form the Acme Very Big Door Company?
Not sure they make doors like that unless they have something to do with really big atomic explosions.
... Titan; up close and personal !
and here is a Link to the PBS 'American Experience' Command and Control .
A documentary about the 1980 accidental explosion of a Titan missile in it's silo. Provides a lot of excellent background info on just how much work it is to babysit a giant rocket in a hole in the ground!
B-47... a beautiful beast! (my art)
... for a Dr. Strangelove wann-be like me; it has been a childhood dream come true to realize I have considerable talent in the Aerospace-Defense illustration field. I started out as a photojournalist, went on to spend a couple of decades shooting commercial studio work and fashion ans (somehow) in the past two years have fallen into cranking out 'photo-illustrations' of airplanes and rocket-ships. So going from hot-babes in next to nothing outfits to atomic-bombers and moon rockets is a fair trade!
The point is that it's great fun to be able to imitate and create anew the king of 'G-Whiz' illustrations that I remember from my Cold-War/ Space-Age youth. It is a chance to make the sort of images that I wish existed - and now do!
...can't resist a post of 'Dutch' Holland and the 'Stratojet' for 'Strategic Air Command'
... scarin' the snot out of NATO (my art)
... the M-50 'Bounder' was as a desperate attempt to produce a Soviet supersonic-bomber. Only two prototypes were built. They were very big, cool looking and had very under-performing engines. But; Boris and Natasha (after large amounts of Vodka were consumed) managed to convince an editor for 'Aviation Week' that the 'Bounder' was really a Nuclear-Powered strategic bomber. Ha-ha- stoopid Capitalist Pig Fools!
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1947 ... Berlin Airlift - RAF Coastal Command (my artwork)
... yes - the Short-Solent did not actually participate in the Berlin airlift. Sunderlands did; but there were no high quality photographs to use as reference.
So squint your eyes a little- or have a stiff scotch - and pretend it's a Sunderland!
... Buy My Art!
... here's a shameless self-promotion for all of you Cold-War buffs out there to Buy My Art!
You can get it in beautiful framed art pieces for your wall - or totally crass sell-out commercial forms like t-shirts, coffee cups and shower curtains! (shower curtains?) Be the first on your block to have a B-52 shower curtain!
... loading new stuff every week- so come back often!
... know your doomsday alphabet!
... trying to figure out the original publication date of this book is difficult - apparently it is still in print!
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