La Jetée Press

01/25/2025

The Sud-Est SE.200 Amphitrite along with the Latécoère 631 was also the result of a specification issued in 1936 by the Direction Générale de l'Aviation Civile for a 40-pax airliner with a range of 4,000 km (2,500 mi).

Like its competitor, the prototype was confiscated by the Germans but destroyed by RAF Mosquitoes. A third one was destroyed in a USAAF attack.

The third airframe flew in 1946 but it was damaged in a hard landing in 1949 and never repaired.

The fourth and fifth airframes were never finished. Sud-Est had plans to finish the fourth airframe.

Sud-Est later merged with Sud-Oest to form Sud Aviation in 1957 and that merged entity is best known for the Caravelle jetliner.

01/24/2025

Note on this Air France Latécoère 631 flying boat how the floats under the wings retract aft to form the rear part of the most outboard engine nacelle.

The aircraft was the result of a specification issued in 1936 by the Direction Générale de l'Aviation Civile for a 40-passenger airliner with a range of 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi).

01/24/2025

Only 10 Latécoère 631 flying boats were built.

The prototype flew in 1942 and was confiscated by the Germans. It was flown to Lake Constance and was destroyed by two RAF Mosquitoes in 1944.

The second one flew in 1945. Air France operated four on services to Martinique via Mauritania but they only were used for 13 months as it was unreliable.

Unfortunately there are no surviving airframes. The last one, operated by Société France Hydro, was lost in 1955.

01/24/2025

Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian this past Monday. It’s impressive just how big it is in person.

Six Orbiters were built but only five went into space.

The first one, Enterprise, only did atmospheric testing and was originally here at Udvar-Hazy, but was replaced by Discovery pictured here and Enterprise went to the Intrepid Museum in NYC.

-Columbia made 28 spaceflights before it was lost on re-entry in 2003.
-Challenger made 10 spaceflights before it was lost on launch in 1986.
-Discovery made 39 spaceflights before it was retired in 2011.
-Atlantis made 33 spaceflights and is on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
-Endeavour was built in 1991 to replace Challenger. It made 25 flights and will go on display at the Oschin Air and Space Center in Los Angeles when it is completed next year.

The spaceworthy Orbiters are displayed differently. Atlantis at the KSC is displayed in orbital configuration with its payload bay doors open.

Discovery at Udvar-Hazy is displayed in landing configuration on its landing gear.
When Oschin at Los Angeles opens, Endeavour will be displayed in launch configuation with the external tank and soild rocket boosters.

01/22/2025

Yours truly this past Monday.

If you sit quietly next to Dash 80, you can hear the spirit of Tex Johnston getting ready to do aileron roll.

12/28/2024

12/15/2024

12/10/2024

This NAMC ad for the YS-11 is from around 1960 prior to the type's maiden flight in 1962.

The YS-11 name comes from the Japanese word for transport (yusō) and design (sekkei). The first 1 in the 11 refers to the engine candidates considered, the Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop had been designated "Number 1" in the design phase.

The second 1 in the 11 refers to the aircraft specification plan used, "Plan 1". Various configurations were examined during the design phase, there was even a "Plan 0".

In the run up to the public unveiling, a catchphrase was used “Let’s meet on the 11th at Sugita in Yokohama.” The marketing cemented the type as the YS-"Eleven" even though to those involved in the design, it was YS-One-One (YS ichi ichi in Japanese).

12/08/2024

This Boeing advertisement for the 737-300 is from 1984 and features the chairman and president of USAir, Ed Colodny, and the chairman and president of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher.

Both USAir and Southwest were the launch customers of the Boeing 737-300 with their orders placed in March 1981.

While Herb Kelleher's story is well known, Colodny is just as distinguished. From Burlington, VT and a graduated of Harvard Law, Colodny worked with the Civil Aeronautics board before joining Allegheny in 1957. He rose through the ranks to eventual lead the airline from 1975-1991. Allegheny rebranded as USAir in 1979 with deregulation.

12/08/2024

There's whole levels of snazzy here you just can't deny.

09/03/2024

Northwest Orient's acquisition rationale for the Boeing 727-100 and Boeing 727-200 were slightly different. The 727-100s came first at the airline as a supplement and then outright replacement for the Lockheed Electra on domestic short-medium haul routes. With its shared features (like engines) with Northwest's 707/720B fleet, the aircraft was popular.

When Boeing came knocking in Minneapolis with the Boeing 727-200, the airline was a ready customer but would use the 727-200 replace the Boeing 707 and 720B on domestic routes. With a similar payload but with three engines and commonality with the 727-100 fleet, Boeing didn't have to try to hard to see the -200.

The first Northwest 727-200s were delivered in 1968 and the type served until 2003.

09/02/2024

The Red Arrows opened their demonstration routine yesterday by overflying the waterfront crowd from behind trailing red, white, and blue smoke. It was quite striking!

The Canadian International Air Show did not disappoint. Not only is it the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force, it’s also the 60th anniversary of the Red Arrows **and** the 75th anniversary of the CIAS, the longest running air show in North America.

The Red Arrows at the Royal Air Force’s demonstration team and the crossed the Atlantic from the UK a few weeks ago to begin their Canadian tour “Exercise Maple Hawk” as part of the commemorations of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s centennial.

Many in the US don’t realize that at the end of the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Air Force was the fourth largest air force in the world in terms of personnel, a remarkable contribution to the war effort given that Canada’s population was only 12 million people in 1945.

09/01/2024

This 1954 Avro Canada advertisement shows cases not just the CF-100 Canuck interceptor, but also the three radar chains that stretched across the North American continent mostly in Canada to warn of a Soviet bomber attack.

The southernmost chain was the Pinetree Line, construction of which began in 1951. Some Pinetree stations were active into the early 90s.

Construction of the Mid-Canada Line or McGill Fence began in 1956, but its radars were plagued with false alerts from birds to general aviation aircraft. Frustrated with the system, Canada shut down the MCL in 1965. The transition of the Soviet threat from bombers to ICBMs accelerated the shut down.

The northernmost line in this ad represents the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line. Work on the DEW Line began in 1954 with improved radars over the other two radar fences. Select DEW Line stations became the North Warning System in 1988 and still operate to this day, though a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin has Canadian and American defense planners mulling modernization of the DEW Line to detect hypersonic weapons.

08/31/2024

This is the cover of a 1975 issue of Air International that focused on variable-geometry aircraft. Swing wings were the design rage aviation in the 1960s and 1970s, but they proved to be heavy (the redesign of the Boeing 2707 SST from a swing wing to a tailed delta is one vivid example) and were ultimately made obsolete by advances in computerized flight control systems that allowed things like relaxed static stability.

This cover depicts the Bell X-5, the Grumman XF10F Jaguar, the Rockwell B-1A, the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-23 "Flogger", the Panavia Tornado IDS, and a piston design I haven't been able to identify yet. I'll open this to the more knowledgeable followers of this page as to the identity of that aircraft.

08/18/2024

This was the cover from American Airlines' inflight magazine on September 1971.

American launched DC-10 services on 5 August 1971 with service between Los Angeles and Chicago O'Hare.

With airlines ordering the Boeing 747 in the mid-1960s, American Airlines' VP of development engineering, Frank Kolk, cautioned C.R. Smith that the 747 was too big for just about anyone's airline network, American included. But American's transcon 707 services had the highest load factors in the network, so the 747 was ordered, but Smith encouraged Kolk to talk to manufacturers about a smaller widebody jet.

Lockheed was most receptive and created a twin-engine widebody that could operate out of La Guardia, but other airlines didn't like two engines, they wanted at least three engines. With American overruled, Lockheed began work on the Tristar.

Douglas, invigorated after the merger with McDonnell, set about work on Kolk's specification but knowing that everyone else wanted three engines rather than two that American desired, pushed ahead for the DC-10 as a trijet.

American was now looking at two very similar designs. The airline liked the RB.211 engine and its three-shaft technology, but it was too short for DC-10's tail nacelle. American's engineering staff preferred the DC-10, but C.R. Smith preferred the Tristar. But he wasn't at the helm any longer as George Spater took the reins at American and it was his call to make.

Spater asked if Douglas could redesign the DC-10 for the RB.211 engine, but since American was the only airline interested in an RB.211 DC-10, no guarantees were offered.

Many assumed American would follow Delta, Eastern and TWA in ordering the Tristar, but when United broke ranks and ordered the DC-10, it gave George Spater comfort in going ahead with ordering the DC-10 for American Airlines.

08/17/2024

This is the cover from a promotional brochure introducing the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 to United's revenue services in 1971.

With Lockheed developing the L-1011 Tristar at the same time as the DC-10, there was a growing consensus in the late 1960s among the US airlines that the market couldn't support two competing widebody trijet designs. American Airlines president George Spater even had discussions with the other airline presidents about settling on a single type.

Analysts crunching the numbers at the potential customer airlines felt that two competing trijet widebodies on the market would ultimately be detrimental to both Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas.

When Delta, Eastern and TWA ordered the Lockheed Tristar, everyone assumed that American and United would follow suit. United, however, was dead set against getting a British engine (the Rolls Royce RB.211 on the Tristar) and broke ranks to get the DC-10 with American Airlines quickly following suit.

It was a toss up if American would have committed to the DC-10 on its own as C.R. Smith liked the Tristar but felt it was George Spater's call to make. United's engineers liked the General Electric CF6 engine as it was less risky than the three-shaft RB.211.

08/16/2024

Following up on yesterday's post about the USAF Handley Page C-10A Jetstream that was canceled, this is the wonderful box art done by Roy Cross for the Airfix 1:72 scale kit when it was first released in 1969. Roy Cross had done many paintings used as box art for Airfix 1964-1974.

The USAF had planned to use the C-10A Jetstream as a personnel transport, seating up to 12 passengers but it could also take 6 stretcher cases in the medevac role. Beechcraft would have marketed the type for the civilian market in the United States as the Beech Model 115 which is a bit ironic as it sat in the same class as the King Air series.

The switch to the Garrett engines from the Astazou engines improved its performance and would have been marketed as the "Jetstream 3M".