Aircraft photos - 1936 - 1938
From Boston, MA and Hartford, CT airports
By Stephen Sherman, Apr. 2007. Updated June 8, 2012.
Here is a collection of 37
photographs that my Dad took, mostly when
he
was a teenage aviation enthusiast, during the years 1936 and 1938. The
photos were labelled in his
ancient little black
scrapbook, and I transcribed them here. He used an inexpensive box
camera, probably a Kodak "Brownie," to take these, and their
quality is mediocre. The originals are small, about the size of a
modern wallet-size photo. My scans capture about all the detail
available on the originals.
He took these at three airports:
- Rentschler Field - East Hartford, CT
- Brainard Field - Hartford, CT, just across the Connecticut River
from
Rentschler Field
- Boston Airport - He labelled these variously "East Boston" and
"Boston Airport." but these terms were synonymous, for the only airport
in the Boston area. Today, it is Logan Airport.
Military airplanes: fighters, bombers, observation planes
Civil aircraft: small high-winged monoplanes, larger passenger
carriers
One of the civil airplanes shown here is the Stinson Reliant, a very
popular personal airplane for the wealthy of the era, including
Connecticut Governor Trumbull. There are other intriguing labels
on the fuselage of some of these planes. The Hartford Courant owned
one; I suppose for its reporters' mobility, or perhaps the
executives. Then there is the Curtiss-Wright Condor, a rather
large bi-plane, apparently operated as a passenger craft by American
Airlines.
My thanks to John Underwood and Ronald Price for adding additional details on these airplanes and correcting some errors.
Don't miss the picture of Charles Lindbergh at the bottom. My Dad
did not take that picture, but he got it from a local photo developer,
who apparently passed around a few copies of it to his friends and
neighbors. You can see that same photo in various places, but at this
point, it surely is in the public domain.