Wednesday, October 3, 2007

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings

Glory to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War! Glory to the Stalin’s falcons!
P. Vandyshev, L. Torich, 1941

This airforce poster was created in 1941 - right after Soviet Union entered World War 2.

In the foreground there is an aircraft gunner who operates ShKAS – a 7.62 mm rapid fire machine gun, which was designed in the thirties and entered production in 1934. It had a firing rate of 1,800 rounds/min for wing or turret-mounted versions, and was significantly more powerful than all its rivals, which could reach only 1.100 rounds/min rate for the best ones like MG-17 (Germany). In 1936 ShKAS was first used in Spain Civil War where Spanish Republic forces received aid from USSR opposing the General Franco’s regime, backed by Nazi Germany and Italy.

1936 Spain Civil War was also a first experience under fire for the aircraft in the background of this poster – the Polikarpov I-16. This was an advanced monoplane fighter with cutting-edge innovations such as retractable landing gear and a fully enclosed cockpit. Although being built from plywood (fuselage) and duralumin only in wings it was designed for speed: with 900 horsepower it could reach 462 km/h at optimal altitude. But it wasn’t the speed that made it a real pre-war champion-killer. The short plane had superb horizontal maneuverability although requiring special skills to fly. Even when the army started receiving new advanced aircrafts some pilots managed to fight the generally superior Messerschmitt Bf 109s on their “Donkeys” – the nickname of I-16 (“donkey” in Russian is “Ishak” which is similar in pronunciation to the “I-16”). And like real donkeys I-16s were very reliable as half of those plains not hit yet were still operational in 1943. I-16 could have up to 4 ShKASes in his wings – obtaining an outstanding firing density.

These two Soviet weapons got together on this poster in order to strengthen the morale of the Soviet people and show the fighting potential the country was capable of. Unfortunately it took another year to put this potential in practice – and finally stop the German offensive at the Battle of Moscow in the early 1942.

Buy Vintage Airplane posters at Allposter.com!



18 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is a pity

Unknown said...

interesting. :)

Rick Hunter said...

very interesting!
i like posters from II World War too.

hugo besteiro said...

great blog!!!

||| said...

neat stuff. where do you find these?

Fedor said...

I'm loving your blog, great job.

Fedor said...

I'm loving your blog, great job.

Celia said...

WOW. These are beautiful!

Alex said...

Dude, I LOVE the soviet posters, I sent it on to an old buddy of mine that is really into old soviet stuff. You know, if you are ever interested in getting more visitors, you should check out Blog Rush. It's free, and has done wonders for my readership.

-Alex

Alek Davis said...

"This airforce poster was created in 1941 - right after the beginning of the World War 2." Well, the World War 2 actually started in September of 1939 with invasion of Poland. You must have meant the Great Patriotic War, which started in 1941, right? BTW, I love your blog! Thank you.

Dan said...

Hi there! I just want to thank you for your excellent blog, i really love it :)

I think you may be interested on this extracts from the book Graphic Design: A History by Alain Weill, about the Russian avant-garde movement... I've uploaded a PDF with text, posters and comments here:

PDF File

Posters

I'm also a collector of 1950s - 1970s advertising, if you like, you can visit my Flickr set.

Thanks again for sharing and comment all this beautiful posters! Greetings!

Anonymous said...

Fascinating bit of history.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't the battle of Moscow in the end of '41 - beginning of 42? I think you should know your history.

Alexander Zakharov said...

Thanks people, i have corrected my mistakes. Where were my brains at the moment? ;)

roentare said...

a great read plus great illustration!

Pan said...

Love the blog! As a graphic designer, I use russian posters to get the creative juices flowing. I'll be by often; thanks again!

MaGnUs said...

Excellent poster. Alexander, by the way, would you know of any site that can identify a Soviet Russian pin I have?

I bought it at a flea market, but I'd like to know what it stands for. Perhaps I could take a picture of it or something, if you know anything about that sort of thing.

Alexander Zakharov said...

MaGnUs

Yeah, sure, send me the jpg at lastmile at yandex.ru
I'll be glad to help.