Nice model, crown r n7!
When I was in my pre-teens in the mid-1950s, I bought what I recall as a special edition of Air Progress magazine. It consisted of nothing but hundreds of small line drawings of international aircraft, perhaps 10 or 15 per page. I literally wore out that magazine, memorizing names and shapes of the most interesting aircraft. I was living in remote Southwestern New Mexico at the time, where aircraft of any type were few and far between.
I remember noticing that the illustrated aircraft were mainly German, British, French, and American. I assumed that meant that those countries were the only ones that were building airplanes — more evidence, to my politically immature mind, that the Soviet Union, the “Russians,” were so technologically behind that they couldn’t build airplanes! It’s not wrong to say that I was…wrong! Or that American and Soviet propaganda had effectively prevented me from knowing more about Russian aviation. Except for one plane, the MiG-15, which newsreels assured us were being downed by the score in Korea by superior Americans aircraft and pilots.
A few years ago, at a flea market here in Vancouver, I bought a plastic bag of perhaps 20 used Russian air letters that had been posted to various addresses in Canada and the U.S. Every one of them had a cachet (printed designs, text, and images at the left of the envelope) picturing Russian airliners. Here are two that pictured the IL-62:
Bob
On the bench: A diorama to illustrate the crash of a Beech T-34B Mentor which I survived in 1962 (I'm using Minicraft's 1/48 model of the Mentor), and a Pegasus model of the submarine Nautilus of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas fame.