The Little World

See? There’s even a three-way view of the plane. And you can see the pink lace curtains in the waist gunner’s position. And the snorkel and the chicken coop.

It has to be true. Otherwise it wouldn’t be here in the book…

I have read my fair share of small illustrated books on aircraft, vehicles, and ships since the 1960’s. It started with an Observer’s Book Of Automobiles that I bought for $ 1.25 in the Hudson’s Bay Company store in Calgary, Alberta. This was when they had the HBC, Alberta, and books. God knows what they have substituted for all of it now…

In any case, it was a small illustrated volume of cars of the period. I cannot say why I found written descriptions of small sedans worth reading at the time, but I now treasure the thing on my bookshelf as a souvenir of childhood. And it set me out on a long road collecting similarly illustrated volumes on locomotives, steamships, and airplanes. In fact I just bought another today at a country bookstore dealing with WW2 aircraft…and I am hoping it is as magnificently and  thoroughly wrong as any of the others…

Through the years my interests in things have gone past the Observer’s Book stage to the point where I have done as much research as I could on certain subjects. The internet has helped to some extent, but bookstores have done even better. And unlike the Modern Major-General, I can tell a Mauser rifle from a javelin. And a British A/B camouflage scheme from a Picasso painting*. But I still treasure the visual and written howlers in the simplistic books…and I am not above choosing to model and paint in response to them.

Many of the illustrations are good looking in their own right, if improbable. They have colour, saturation, and theatre about them – the aviation versions of an Angus McBride warrior, albeit not as short and broad in the nose…Many would make admirable die-cast subjects in glossy paint and with bright decals.

And that may be why I will shamelessly haul out the glossy lacquer and start giggling. I’m a twelve-year-old hiding in a skinny old body and I want more toys…

* The camouflage makes more sense…