Whipped Cream Difficulties

This could, maybe, fall under travel, but I thought I’d use these here today instead.

Great and good FotB RoadRich joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, and we spent some time afterwards sitting around, chatting, and watching a few videos on the ‘Tube. Here’s one that came up: Jimmy Stewart talks about flying planes out of LAX…before it was LAX.

In 1928, the Los Angeles City Council selected 640 acres (1.00 sq mi; 260 ha) in the southern part of Westchester for a new airport for the city. The fields of wheat, barley and lima beans were converted into dirt landing strips without any terminal buildings. It was named Mines Field for William W. Mines, the real estate agent who arranged the deal. The first structure, Hangar No. 1, was erected in 1929 and is in the National Register of Historic Places.

Bonus #1: “The Story of Modern Airline Transportation”, from American Airlines. “Modern”, in this case, being 1933.

Bonus #2: RoadRich mentioned this to me, and I couldn’t pass it up. This is actually what got us started down this path. From 1953, “Flying With Arthur Godfrey”, a vintage Eastern Airlines promo film.

Godfrey used his pervasive fame to advocate a strong anti-Communist stance and to pitch for enhanced strategic air power in the Cold War atmosphere. In addition to his advocacy for civil rights, he became a strong promoter of his middle-class fans vacationing in Hawaii and Miami Beach, Florida, formerly enclaves for the wealthy. He made a television movie in 1953, taking the controls of an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed Constellation airliner and flying to Miami, thus showing how safe airline travel had become. As a reserve officer, he used his public position to cajole the Navy into qualifying him as a Naval Aviator, and played that against the United States Air Force, who later successfully recruited him into the Air Force Reserve. At one time during the 1950s, Godfrey had flown every active aircraft in the military inventory.

In addition to Godfrey actually flying a Constellation, Eddie Rickenbacker shows up as well.

“I used to sit around up there at 20,000 feet with the sun at my back waiting for the enemy Fokkers to come around.”

“No, no, no – these fokkers were Messerschmitts!”

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2020 at 2:00 pm and is filed under History, Planes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.