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1912, Aviation History, The Literary Digest

1912: An Important Year in Military Aviation
(The Literary Digest, 1912)

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1912 was the year that the Lewis Gun was first mounted on military aircraft. The military possibilities of this combination was immediately recognizable to all onlookers:

The potential results of swooping aircraft, armed to the teeth with death dealing bullets, is staggering to ordnance officers of the Army and Navy who discuss it. ‘Where will this lead?’ they ask. Is it possible that the air is to harbor the greatest destructive forces in modern warfare? There seems nothing to prevent it.

Click here to read an article about the development of aerial reconnaissance during W.W. I.

1912, Aviation History, Popular Mechanics Magazine

The First Casualty of an Air War
(Popular Mechanics, 1912)

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It was during the Italian-Turkish War (1911 – 12) that aircraft began to play active rolls in support of military operations. This article is remarkable in that it reports that as early as 1912, aircraft was used not merely to aid in the observation of enemy troop movements but also to drop bombs.

Captain Monte of the Italian army aeroplane corps has achieved the distinction of being the first airman wounded in battle while in the air with his machine.

Flight Clothing for Aviators (Sears and Roebuck, 1918)
1918, Aviation History

Flight Clothing for Aviators
(Sears and Roebuck, 1918)

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The inability of the Sears & Roebuck Company to understand the nature of early aviation was made manifest by the fact that the first pilots used to wear horse-back riding clothes before taking to the skies.

Attached, you will find two pages from the Sears Military Equipment Catalog of 1918, pictured are flight-clothing items offered for military or private purchase.

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Odd-Shaped Propeller More Efficient (Popular Mechanics, 1918)
1918, Aviation History, Popular Mechanics Magazine

Odd-Shaped Propeller More Efficient
(Popular Mechanics, 1918)

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For at least one week in 1918, the slide-rule jockeys lounging about in the faculty watering holes at the aeronautical engineering brain-trusts believed that the propeller illustrated herein was pretty slick, and bound to bring greater speed to the aircraft of the day. But the bright lads at OldMagazineArticles.com couldn’t help but notice that this propeller design was never seen any time after this issue of POPULAR MECHANICS was on the stand, so we have our doubts concerning the increased efficiency that the propeller was credited in creating…


What do you think?

Charles Lindbergh Goes to War (Collier's Magazine, 1946)
1946, Charles Lindbergh, Collier's Magazine

Charles Lindbergh Goes to War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

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When America entered the Second World War, Charles Lindbergh reached out to President Roosevelt and expressed his desire to serve; in light of the fact that Lindbergh had made numerous trips to Germany and met with Goering on several occasions, the President cordially declined his offer. However, these liaisons did not exclude him from working in the private sector for one of the many defense contractors, which is precisely what he did.

These two articles were written by an Army Air Corps colonel shortly after the war recalling his unexpected brush with Lindbergh when he was serving in New Guinea. The United Aircraft Corporation had hired the Lone Eagle to serve as a technical observer in the Pacific, where he could study the combat performance of the P-38 fighters. The articles served to expose to the American people that Lindbergh had performed a variety of patriotic tasks far beyond his corporate job description:

My God! He shouldn’t go on a combat mission, when did he fly the Atlantic? Must have been in 1927 and he was about twenty-five then. That would make him at least forty-two years old, and that’s too old for this kind of stuff.

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D-Day-Plus-One (Yank Magazine, 1944)
1944, D-Day, Yank Magazine

D-Day-Plus-One
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

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D-Day for my outfit was a long, dull 24-hour wait. We spent the whole day marooned in the middle of the English Channel, sunbathing, sleeping and watching the action miles away on the shore through binoculars. We could hear the quick roars and see the greenish-white flashes of light as Allied Battleships and cruisers shelled the pillboxes and other German installations on the beach.

On D-plus-one we took off for shore. Four Messerschmidtts dove down to strafe the landing crafts as we headed in, but a Navy gunner drove them off with a beautiful burst of ack-ack…

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Religion During the Great Depression
1933, The Great Depression, The Literary Digest

The 1930s March to the Pews
(Literary Digest, 1933)

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…since the Depression began one out of every six banks has failed, one out of every forty-five hospitals has closed, one out of every twenty-two business and industrial concerns has become bankrupt…


– for those living in the digital age, the quote posted above is simply another mildly interesting, stale line from American history – but when those words were written in 1932 it meant for those who read it that there world was falling apart. So much of what they were taught to believe in was collapsing before their very eyes and as a result they felt a need to know God – and know Him they did; half way through 1932 churches and other religious bodies showed a total net gain of 929,252 members thirteen years of age or over – one of the largest gains ever recorded – and the total membership, thirteen years or more of age, reached the record figure of 50,037,209.


Click here to read about the American South during the Great Depression.

1935, Pathfinder Magazine, Renewable Energy

The Solar Motor
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

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Pictured herein is Dr. C.W. Hewlett – early proponent of solar energy.
He was employed by the research department at General Electric and can be seen demonstrating his brainchild, the Solar Electric Motor:

Four small, round iron plates constitute the cell which converts the light into power. The plates are coated with selenium over which is an extremely thin layer of platinum. Both of the metals are ‘light sensitive’ and convert certain of the the rays into electricity, but as to just how this is done science is pretty vague.

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U.S. Navy Sailor Hat Regulations
1945, Miscellaneous, Yank Magazine

Wearing the U. S. Navy Sailor Hat
(Yank, 1945)

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The following article and illustration were clipped from the World War Two G.I. magazine, YANK; which we have included in our study of American World War One naval uniforms because we couldn’t imagine that the regulations involving the wearing of the lid could have been that much more different from the days when Admiral Simms ran the shop.

The News of Hitler's Death (Yank Magazine, 1945)
1945, Adolf Hitler, Yank Magazine

The News of Hitler’s Death
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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The June 1st issue of YANK MAGAZINE did a fine job of capturing the excitement that was felt in civilized quarters as the allied armies poured into Germany from all sides. As the news of Hitler’s suicide spread throughout Europe, a YANK reporter took a sampling of G.I. opinion on the subject. One G.I. in Italy opined:

Now they say Hitler is dead. Maybe he is. If he is, I don’t believe he died heroically. Mussolini died at least something like a dictator, but somehow I can’t figure Hitler dying in action…


Read an article about some bored newspaper editors who were curious to know what the headlines would look like if Hitler had been killed in 1941.

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was hitler an atheist | was hitler a christian
1945, Adolf Hitler, Compiled by the U.S. Dept. of War

Atheist or Christian?
(U.S. Dept. of War, 1945)

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Was Adolf Hitler a follower of Jesus Christ or was he a man who saw no intelligence in the universe whatever? Today, for reasons that are quite understandable, neither the atheists or the Christians are eager to count the madman in their ranks. Hoping to diffuse this never-ending argument (that has found a home on the internet) OldMagazineArticles.com offers this page of research from a U.S. Army study on Hitler’s military that indicates Hitler’s sympathy for atheists.


Read about Hitler’s persecution of the Christian Church…

Hitler Christmas Celebration 1939
1939, Adolf Hitler, Pathfinder Magazine

A Very Hitler Christmas
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

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Whether it was the nog, the tannenbaum or just the good ol’ spirit of the season – no one knows – but in late of December of 1938, the nice Hitler came out for some airing:

Partly as a Yuletide truce and partly because most of them were suffering from severe frostbite, 18 ‘reformed Communists’ and 7,000 Jews were released from concentration camps.

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