Impressing the Night Shift
This painting by Stan Vosburg was featured in the Pageant of the Masters
in the 1999 Laguna Beach Festival of Arts.

It was beautiful, it was fast, and it had a grace of line and
contour few airplanes have possessed. Spooling back
through half a century we see its silver sides glistening in
the late afternoon sun. Just under a canopy of camouflage
netting a young army ferry pilot leans against its flank
and confers with one of the many young women that has
helped to bring this Mustang into being. A crew returning
from a rudder repair job on the flight line catches a
glimpse of a fleeting romance. Men busily prepare
waiting steeds for their final test flights as North
American P-51D’s are spewed off the assembly line at a
rate of one an hour, 24 hours a day. Looking north from
the Mines Field plant we can almost hear the throaty
growl of Packard built Merlin engines, and the staccato
crackle of six wing-mounted Browning machine guns
being test fired nearby. Barrage balloons float
whimsically over the northern horizon where the Santa
Monica Mountains jut up behind the derrick covered
Baldwin Hills.
Building 15,864 deadly defenders of democracy in less
than three short years was a colossal feat of human will
and ingenuity. World War Two is nearly a generation
behind us now, yet silver links to those epic days still
linger in the few remaining P-51’s that thrill us with the
flash and roar of their passage through our peaceful
skies.
Limited edition of 1,250 prints on acid-free, 100-pound cover stock.
Image = 33 x 22 in. Trimmed print = 37 x 27 in.
Certificate of authenticity included.
A print signed and numbered by the artist is $125. 
Stan Vosburg
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