Peter Bowers' Curtiss Pusher

Peter Bowers also owned the Continental-powered 1947 Curtiss Pusher replica NX5704N built by Walter Bullock, now held by the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum in Hood River OR. There are photographs of it posed with various antique cars and modern jet aircraft such as this 1960 image of Bowers and the Curtiss with an X-15 and B-52 mother ship at Edwards AFB.
Photo, which is cropped, via Peter Bowers, photgrapher unknown.

And there is this oft-used image. In his book A Complete Guide To Aviation Photography (Tab Books, 1980) Bowers explained how the photograph was taken; 
A special "Then and Now" action impossible to get from a fixed poition. The photographer was in the back of a pickup truck on a taxiway at Boeing Field, Seattle. The author was in his replica of a 1912 Curtiss Pusher at the head of the runway while the Boeing 707 Jet Transport Prototype was airborne a couple of miles downwind and lined up with the runway. At just the right time, the Pusher and the pickup started off together and the Pusher moved over toward the taxiway to fly formation on the pickup, which had stabilized at a speed of 50 mph. By holding steady formation the Pusher eliminated the time-speed-distance variables between it and the camera. The 707 then dragged by over the runway as slowly as it could (about 120 mph), the pilot keeping the pickup in sight over the wing of the Pusher. Use of a 10-inch (2X) lens on the Speed Graphic reduced the apparent distance beween the planes and also the actual size differential.
The photographer was Byron Wingett of Boeing using a Speed Graphic set to 1/500 at f.11 on Kodak TriX film.
It's not hard to imagine slide-rule wielding Boeing engineers clustered around a desk planning the timing required for the photo.

Those odd aircraft pairings used to illustrate progress bring to mind this post card produced twenty years before of Douglas DST NC16006 overtaking a stagecoach. Is it great photography or good darkroom trickery? Did pilot, teamster and photographer plan this perfectly or was a double exposure created in a darkroom?
Post card undated, published by Brace Erion Incorporated, East Aurora NY

Ian M Macdonald
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