Form = Function = Beauty
Is it just YHS or does it seem since the intrusion of CAD and other automated design devices that aesthetics have taken a back seat in aircraft design? There was a day when an aircraft both funcitoned well and looked, well, pleasing, was easy on the eyes and sprang from the worn pencil and fertile mind of the artist/designer.
Take, for example, the Lockheed Constellation. Designed in the early 1940’s to carry 40 passengers 3,500 nm in swift comfort, the Connie (designation L-049) had such notables as Kelly Johnson work on the design. And what a design – from the gracefully curved fuselage (designed to provide lift) to the slim wings derived from the P-38 Lightning to the distinctive triple tail, this was a design for the ages.
To be sure, the workhorse Douglas’ (DC-4/-6/-7) saw more employed in MATS and civil livery, and even they had a certain functional beauty to them (unlike the Boeing Stratocruiser which looked like a B-29 with a serious goiter…)
But the Connie, well there just isn’t another in comparison.
And when you look at today’s 7×7’s or Airbus generic appliance-like creations – what is there to stir the heart? To spur a quickening of the pulse or evoke a long sigh (other than the dreary thought of being packed in with 200+ other miserable souls in the 6 abreast cattle car)? To leave an impression of the journey as something best thought of having successfully endured vice savoured?
The Airplane as Appliance 
Connie in Motion:
Happy Father’s Day, sir. I very much hope that the day is an enjoyable one for you and your family. 🙂
Elegance is nowhere to be found in the designs of modern aircraft. What a joy to once again see the days when commercial air travel was a pleasureable experience. The craft, crew, and all personnel of an airline took such pride in every aspect of their psoition in a company, and it was reflected in loyalty from consumers.
Should anyone who is able to remember those days inform a much younger person of the “joys of travel”, they would run to the nearest telephone and call 911 to say there was someone hallucinating about air travel being a pleasant experience!!!
Thank you for making the effort to provide the videos for today’s post. There’s always something new to learn and something to provide a brief interlude to pleasant times.
Veritas et Fidelis Semper 🙂
Once upon a time, long ago, a mom, two sisters and a son, in the late summer of 1962 climbed aboard a Connie at Travis AFB, enroute a small island named Okinawa. The first leg was fine, but the night takeoff from Hickam AFB resulted in a fire in one of the engines during run up at the end of the runway, resulting in nothing more than much anxiousness followed by offloading to buses and three days at a hotel, where the Scorpions flew low in the landing pattern. Then it was off to Wake Is and the final destination.
Ah, those videos fired off more than a few dormant synapses, SJS. My father was stationed in Paris in the mid-50’s and I attended a DoD school on Orly Field, which was Paris’ international airport at the time, in addition to being a dual-use base for the French AF and USAF (no active USAF aircraft based there, just admin functions). At any rate, the international terminal was only about a five-minute walk from my school, and several of the other kids and I would have lunch at the terminal occasionally, gawking all the while at the Air France and TWA Connies parked on the ramp…and the PanAm Stratocruisers, too. The Connies were the universal favorite amongst us kids…such a beautiful aircraft.
It’s not just you…I’m in full agreement that passenger aircraft just aren’t nearly as beautiful or distinctive as they were in the way-back. In closing, I never got to fly in a Connie, but I had quite a few miles in DC-3s, DC-6s, and DC-7s as a kid (young adult, too!). And on some pretty esoteric airlines, too…like Middle East Airlines (the Lebanese flag-carrier) and THY — Turk Hava Yolari — the Turkish flag-carrier, just to name two.
Thanks for the post!!
While my first flight was in a Cessna 140 (age 2) my first CommAir flight included a leg from Chicago to Omaha (via a weather divert to Denver) when we moved from NC to Nebraska in 1960…
– SJS