The Little World

We’ve all seen one that we liked – and ten that made us wince.

I mean the commemorative scheme applied to a current airplane in someone’s roster. It may be a warplane, a civil airliner, or a private plane. It might be an R/C model or a static one. But as soon as you see it you know you want it repainted. Or put in a bag.

If you are at war, you try to make your warplanes inconspicuous, if not invisible. The reward for this is they are not shot down or up and the pilots get to live. A powerful incentive.

When you are at peace you still have to keep the paint shop busy and the press on your side. So you come out with commemorative paint jobs to decorate the hardware. The only problem is whatever you paint on generally looks either childish or naff. The US Navy is prime in this, putting flashes, starbursts, animals, and cartoon characters onto the warplanes. Combined with the over-stencilling of the vehicles, it leads to the conclusion that Walt Disney has been made a fleet admiral.

I hasten to add that in real conflicts the use of Walt’s cartoons or those of the Warner brothers on the front end of planes full of young men who were risking death was perfectly in order. if they were out there amongst the flak and machine gun bullets, they had a right to anything they wanted on the outside of their planes.

But painting up a current trainer in the colours of a wartime theatre is a little…well…theatrical. I’ll still build a model of one, as it is a reproduction of real life, but I’m not so sure there is real respect in pinching colours.

I am also not a fan of the airline who tries to make the outside of the airliner look like an aboriginal dot painting or an orange Monet canvas. I suspect some form of money-shifting from the corporate balance sheet to a complicit artist to a Swiss account. Save the money, save the paint, and spend the excess on maintenance of the engines.