This is another post moved over from my original Sundry Collectibles blog. I have some new material that I want to post coming soon. I am especially excited by a post card I found this past week showing an airship from 1910 in France. More on that later!
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It’s been a while since I have posted any aviation postcards here, so today we are going to look at this Douglas DC-7. This aircraft was, as the card states, the world’s fastest airliner for a time in the 1950’s. Built from 1953 to 1958, it was the last of the big turbo-charged propeller driven aircraft built by Douglas. You may recall that the DC-8 was a jet aircraft that Douglas 
came out with starting in 1958 (oh the good old days…when you could develop new passenger aircraft in a few years!)
Anyway…when this plane was put into service in 1953, it offered the first non-stop airliner service from east coast to west coast. It was eight hours, nominally, not the ~five and a half hour trip it is today. (Note…if you have ever travelled east to west on a day when the gulf stream is really blowing…then you know that even in a modern jet, the trip can take up to 7 hours or more.)
According to the 1000 aircraft photos site (which has this exact postcard photo on its site) this particular aircraft served United Airlines until it was sold in 1964. Eventually it was destroyed in a fire at a facility where it was being scrapped. Not a very glorious finish for this plane I am afraid.
Until next time…
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