Douglas Rolfe cutaway drawings

[Leif Ohlsson]

Douglas Rolfe cutaway drawings

As an aside and an interlude in the Fi-1 sailplane thread the name of Douglas Rolfe, aircraft and technical sketch & drawing artist, came up. My curiosity led me to further findings which merit their own thread. I'll give them to you straight and get back to sources and links to high-resolution original scans after that.









These are examples of the Douglas Rolfe cutaways of early airplanes, published in Air Progress - History of Aviation 1952. They are among the ones Don Boose refered to in the Fi-1 thread.

These cutaways were first found in the forum Autosport com. The first post of Rolfe cutaways contains the Wright 1903 Flyer, and at the other end of the spectrum, the Douglas Skkyrocket (something for the X-plane enthusiasts!)

In this post the contributor ("Embers") comments: [Rolfe] "was a prolific aircraft illustrator from the 1930's to the early 1960's. Much of his illustration work, aside from his cutaways, was published in a book Airplanes of the World which went through at least four editions. His style was distinctive, with many arrowed notations and side illustrations. These side illustrations often show structural and control details, which probably is a reflection of his life history. As a youngster he built a man-carrying glider prior to World War I, learned to fly on a Morane Parasol, and flew and repaired a Curtiss Jenny on barnstroming tours of the southern United States after that war."

The second post, a bit later on, contains the Bleriot XI, Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny", and the Ryan NYP "Spirit of St. Louis".

All these cutaways have been collected ( possibly by the same person, albeit now called "Planesman"?) in an Imageshack Photostream. There are many, many other huge cutaways in this Photostream. This is the place to mine for further findings...

Obtained from that photostream, here are the direct links to the big cutaways republished here. These links are the ones you should use for downloading to your own computer:

• Wright's Biplane
• Bleriot Cross-Channel Plane
• The Famous Jenny
• Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis
• Extra five-view of the Spirit (not by Rolfe, and not shown here, but the best drawing of the Spirit I've seen)

The quality is just amazing. Here's an example from the Spirit of St. Louis cutaway by Rolfe:



This is the original resolution of these downloads, no enlarging. You can imagine that the filesizes are about ten times larger then what the site admits, which is why you will have to download these files yourselves.

[Leif Ohlsson]

More Douglas Rolfe

There are a few more delightful finds of works by Rolfe. Here's a little flight simulator of 1939 vintage (Flying Aces, February 1939), found in a RC groups.com thread):



Here's the direct download link for the pdf-file of this 1939 vintage Flight Simulator. It's so delightful that I am strongly tempted to take a whack at it. Perhaps someone else will feel the same way and make a card model of it. Wouldn't it just be perfect in the automata download section of the site?

Here are two additional technical illustrations by Rolfe I found. They are of the Republic RC-3 Seabee (General Assembly, and Cabin):



Just to collect all things Rolfe in one thread, here are four other examples of work by Douglas Rolfe, originally published in the Fi-1 thread (sources in order: Taildraggers, Paleofuture blog, X-planes Tumblr, EAA):



For biographical notes in Rolfe's own words, download this interview in a 1960 "Aviation" Magazine article.

As noted by Don Boose, in 1962 many of Rolfe's drawings were collected between hard covers in Airplanes of the World 1490 to 1960 with text by Alex Dawydoff. It is available for one U.S. penny (sic! - albeit plus postage & packing of course) from Amazon.com: Airplanes of the World, 1490 to 1962.

[Swampfox]

Leif, I've been busier than a Swampfox in a hen house, but have been following your excellent thread.. The latest post with the links to early aviation art has lead me to buy a copy of "Airplanes of the world by Rolfe". I've seen his work for years but never knew he'd done so much.........and special thanks to Don for your knowledge and sharing also.

Really enjoying both your inputs.........

Thanks,
Swampfox

[Don Boose]

Thanks so much for posting these wonderful drawings, Leif. Although I have many of them in my much loved (but quite battered) Air Progress 1952 and (still in good condition) Airplanes of the World, I had not previously seen the "Midget Flight Trainer." I have also discovered some wartime and pre-war drawings from such sources as Mechanix Illustrated. Rolfe was also a small boat sailor and designed a little sailing boat. I hope eventually to be able to add a few more leads to his drawings.

Swamp Fox, I thought this would be down your alley.

Don

[chicharrero]

Big, big thanks, Leif.
I have found in that page a excellent cutaway of the Douglas Skyknight.
I was looking for it for a long time.

[Darwin]

Thanks for the posting, Leif. These remind me of the Wylam drawings....I will hasten to get these safely in my references folder.

[HMCS]

great job leif! I love the midget trainer,.. will be a cool toy to build for my boys,.. and a potential science project prop for them

[Bengt Fredén]

Great find, Leif!

Excellent detail in these drawings and informative text, too. I have downloaded the Ryan NYP (both!), the Wright bros. Flyer, the Blériot XI, the Curtiss
JN-4 Jenny, the Convair 340 Metropolitan and the Lockheed 'Super Connie', of course.

Great to have, when attempting a card model build of any of these iconic planes. I have a laserprinted silver-paper Spirit of St. Louis in the larger A3-size that I must build some of these days...

Thanks for sharing this fine thread!
/ Bengt

[philipme109]

Very nice drawings!!

[billy.leliveld]

Great stuff Leif!
Thanx....