Jets Come of Age
Instead of focusing on the violence of revolutions on the ground, game publishers of the 1950s set their sights high – zooming in on the marvels of new technologies emerging in the skies.
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Jet aircraft came into play in the latter days of WWII. As the Cold War began, both sides scrambled for air supremacy. Western and Communist powers alike needed new designs for every role: strategic nuclear bombing, tactical bombing, dogfighting, bomber interception and escort, reconnaissance and transport. The advent of nuclear weapons made the aerial contest even more important.
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But the drama of flight continued to appeal to game players as well. The result was a surge of games that illustrated the latest and greatest in the skies. The post-war British game Air Race recalled the pre-war golden age of civilian air racing, but the game featured the Gloster Meteor, Britain’s first production jet fighter.
A few Meteors saw service late in WWII, and the plane remained in military service into the 1960s.
A Meteor set the world’s first official speed record for a jet aircraft in November, 1945, with a Meteor F.3 clocked at 606 mph (975 km/hr). The game’s art evolved as new jets came on stream. One later edition featured a twin-tailed de Havilland Vampire, the first jet aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1960, Warren Built-Rite Games published Jet Race Game. Its box cover featured the F-106A Delta Dart interceptor flown by Major Joseph W. Rogers on Dec. 15, 1959. The occasion was one of the last of the Thomson air trophy races. Major Rogers won the race with a world record speed of 1,526 miles per hour (2,456 km/hr), the first plane to surpass the 1,500 mph mark. The painting featured on the box was by famed American artist Charles H. Hubbell.
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The plane went on to serve as the main American all-weather interceptor through the 1980s, and was the last U.S. plane designed exclusively to attack incoming bombers. It had no gun and no ability to carry bombs. Its only weapons were air-to-air missiles. Four of them were Hughes AIM-4 Falcons. The remaining one was one of two types of nuclear-tipped missiles designed to destroy an entire bomber formation with a single shot. Along with jet engines, the widespread use of missile marked a huge change in aerial tactics.
Missiles get pride of place in another 1950s game, Combat Bagatelle (far left), which features an earlier F-102 Delta Dagger interceptor.
Battlefield (near left), another bagatelle game of the period, shows a surface-to-air launcher.
Milton Bradley took missile-armed ground-attack planes into the mainstream in 1964 with Guided Missile Air Force Game (below). The artwork was modern but the game was old-school.
Players had to spin a top and try to have it come to rest in holes beside the targeted planes on the ground.
Plane Parade, for instance, was published by Harett-Gilmar Inc. of Far Rockaway, NY, around 1955. This game used a wheel under the board and a lever that reveals additional information through windows in the board.
Players first get only a small silhouette view from top, side and front. Advancing the lever reveals a larger, full color image of the plane near the top of the board (which shows the nationality). And pushing the lever all the way reveals the answer.
Players turn four dials to identify both the model and details of the plane. Two of these are needed to cover the possible names.
The other dials ask for details about performance, including speed and range, size, wingspan and length.
The game includes two disks, each with information on both sides. Together, they display 32 different planes from the United States, Great Britain and Russia.
Some of the planes were standards for their countries in the mid-1950s, including Korean War stalwarts like the American fighters F-86 Sabre and Soviet MiG-15.
Also included are nuclear bombers such as the Boeing
B-52 Stratofortress and its predecessors the Convair
B-36H and Boeing B-47 Stratojet from the United States, the Electric Canberra from the UK and the Soviet Ilyushin Il28.
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Some rare aircraft and breakthrough technologies also show up in this game.
The best window on the Cold War evolution of air combat technology came from air recognition games. These were popular during WWII, and they continued to win fans through the 1950s.
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Showing on the board at left is the
B-61 Martin Matador, with a visual image but no technical silhouette. The Matador was the first nuclear-armed cruise missile. It carried the W5 nuclear warhead, an improvement on the WWII Fat Boy, and entered service in 1952.
The game also includes an image of the Douglas Nike (below right), the first American surface-to-air missile, and of the Soviet Lavochkin La-17, the first Soviet drone (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV), which came into service in 1956.
Other notable aircraft include the Northrop F-89 Scorpion, the first fighter jet armed with a nuclear air-to-air missile, the unguided Genie. Only one was ever fired live, as a test in July 1957.
Less successful was the F7U-3 Chance Vought Cutlass. This was a carrier-based fighter that racked up the worst safety record in US history, with 78 accidents and a quarter of the airframes lost within 55,000 flying hours.
And then there was the Lockheed LXV (above left). This was an early and unsuccessful experiment in vertical takeoff and landing. It had two counter-rotating propellers in the nose, and sat on its tail on the ground, with the aircraft pointing straight up.
Another 1950s aircraft recognition game provides an even more interesting look into early jet technology. Electric Air Age Spotter asks players for much less information. Players try to match plane pictures with one of four pieces of information on the right side of the card, and light up a red Wrong or a yellow Right light. However, the game includes views of 48 different planes. All of these are either American or British with the exception of the WWII Arado 234 Blitz from Germany and the Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck.
The Arado was the world’s first operational jet-powered bomber. It appeared in late in WWII and was used mostly for reconnaissance. It was the last Luftwaffe plane to successfully fly over the United Kingdom, in April 1945.
The CF-100, also known affectionately as the Canuck, was ordered by the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1946.
It wanted a plane that would be effective in intercepting Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole. The resulting plane (above) featured a long range, the ability to operate in all weather conditions, and a fairly short take-off run. This made it ideal for Canada’s vast reaches and necessarily small and scattered airfields. The CF-100 made its first flight in 1950, and remained in service until 1981.
Electric Air Age features many of the same jet-age stalwarts as Plane Parade, but also includes an impressive variety of short-lived experimental aircraft of the era.
Early British prototypes include the Folland Midge, the Short SB.5, the Boulton Paul P.120, the de Havilland DH 108 Swallow and the Saunders-Roe SRA.1 (left).
This last was the world’s first jet-propelled seaplane. It made its maiden flight on July 16, 1947, but never made it into production.
The game includes more than a dozen American experimental jets. Many are early prototypes that never saw production, including the Bell X-5 and Douglas Skystreak fighters, the Vought F6U naval fighter, the Lockheed XF-90 and Bell XP-83 escort fighters, and the Douglas XB-43, Martin XB-48 and Convair XB-46 bombers. Five highly unusual designs are especially notable.
The Martin XB-51 (above right) had three engines: two underneath the forward fuselage and one at the extreme tail with its intake at the base of the tailfin. If first flew in 1949, but never made it into production. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart (right) was a seaplane fighter that rode on two hydro-skis for takeoff and landing. The program was cancelled after test pilot Charles Richbourg was killed when his plane disintegrated in mid-air on Nov. 4, 1954.
The Martin XP6M-1 SeaMaster (top left) was a seaplane bomber that the U.S. Navy pitched as a minelayer while slyly aiming to get its own strategic nuclear force. It cancelled the plane in 1959 after development of the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile.
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The Northrop YB-49 heavy bomber used the same flying-wing design as the piston-powered Northrop XB-35 and YB-35. Only two were ever built, but it proved valuable decades later during the development of the B-2 stealth bomber.
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The Northrop XP-79 was an attempt to use the flying-wing shape for a fighter plane. The pilot operated the aircraft while lying down, enabling him to endure higher G-forces. It went into an unexplained vertical spin and crashed 15 minutes into its first test flight on Sept. 12, 1945, killing test pilot Harry Crosby. The project was then cancelled.
Further operational American planes shown in the game range from WWII piston-engined planes and Korean War jets to long-serving utility aircraft like the Cessna T-37 Tweet jet trainer and the multi-role Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport.
Finally, there is the unusual Ryan FR Fireball. This was proposed during
WWII by Admiral John S. McCain Sr., grandfather of the late Senator John S. McCain III. It was a mixed-power design, with a conventional propeller engine in its nose and a turbojet mounted in the rear fuselage. The plane made it into production but only one operational squadron had been equipped by the time Japan surrendered. It was taken out of service in 1947.
The race for domination on high was not limited to the Earth’s atmosphere. Aeronautical research included rockets, and rockets had the potential to reach space. While military strategists fretted over the impact of intercontinental ballistic missiles, political leaders saw potential in reaching for the stars. So did game publishers.
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