Title: Aeroput
Artist: Hans Wagula (1894-1964)
Year of Publication: Between April of 1931 and February of 1933
Publisher: Typografija D.A., Zagreb
Language: Serbian
Size:
Index Number: 00298

Description:

“Ground Roads Are Tiresome/Air Roads Are Relaxing” proclaims this poster advertising the services of the Yugoslavian airline Aeroput. Artist Hans Wagula’s vibrant but stylized imagery reinforces the poster’s tag line. Strong vertical bars of yellow and blue symbolize day and night, with a steam locomotive pulling lit-up passenger cars at night . By contrast, overhead, a yellow and blue airplane gracefully soars, in the bright daylight, ostensibly surpassing the train which travels through the darkened landscape at a seemingly slow, almost static, pace.

The text beneath the poster gives the airline’s name, Aeroput, and underneath, “Yugoslavia.” Although the language is Serbian, Aeroput served not only local markets, but had international links as well. Founded in 1927 to operate between Belgrade (then Yugoslavia’s capital) and Zagreb, the company extended operations in 1929 to include the city of Skopje and an international link to Vienna, in Austria. This linkage resulted from partnerships between Aeroput, Austroflug (an Austrian airline) and CIDNA, a predecessor of Air-France.

In 1930—31, Aeroput opened a more extended line, from Vienna to the Austrian city of Graz, then on to Yugoslavian Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje, and Salonika. This line comprised a portion of an air link between Europe and India, thus playing an important role in connecting the West and the East via air, as well as for passengers and freight passing north and south through central and eastern Europe.
At this time, Yugoslavia had three airports, in Belgrade, Skopje, and Zagreb. While the country’s aviation industry offered little competition to such major players as France and Britain, its industry and burgeoning airlines across Europe grew steadily in the inter-war period. In the first years of the 1930’s, there were four aircraft factories making a few hundred planes per annum, with four engine companies putting out roughly the same number of aircraft engines. As was typical across the continent, Aeroput received a government subsidy, with significant amounts of cash invested to help the operation grow. Aeroput offered carriage for passengers, mail, and freight, the key revenue streams of the new industry.

The airplane depicted, UN-SAA, is a de Havilland DH.80A Puss Moth and was registered on April 4, 1931. The de Havilland company had designed the Puss Moth to serve a growing class of wealthy private customers who desired greater comfort in their aircraft. An enclosed cockpit, shown in the poster, was one of the model’s essential features. A high-winged monoplane first flown as a prototype in 1929 in the United Kingdom, the Puss Moth seated the pilot in front and two passengers side-by-side behind, with a compartment for luggage in the rear. The engine, the de Havilland Gipsy III (later the Gipsy Major) had an inverted mounting, allowing the pilot greater visibility over the nose. Although the prototype had a wooden fuselage, the production airplane was manufactured with a welded steel and fabric construction, the first light de Havilland plane constructed of these materials. An additional feature of the airplane was that it could rotate its shock absorber fairings for air braking. With capacity for only three persons it could never be a large-scale commercial carrier and was primarily marketed to private pilots.

Manufactured between March of 1930 and March of 1933, roughly three hundred were made between the United Kingdom and Canada. Many of these craft accomplished ground-breaking flights. The married flyers Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson, flew Puss Moths, with Mollison using one to make the first solo east-west crossing of the Atlantic in 1932, and another to make the first solo crossing of the South Atlantic in 1933. Aeroput flew UN-SAA (production number 2142,) from 1931 until early 1933. At that point, it was sold back to a company in the United Kingdom. It crashed in 1936, and was withdrawn from use in July of 1938.

The coming of World War II and subsequent establishment of Yugoslavia’s Communist government drastically changed the young Yugoslav aviation industry. Before that time, however, this poster illustrates the promise of aviation industry in the 1920s-1930s—an era when commercial aircraft began crossing the central and eastern European skies, laying out early routes, bringing faster mail delivery, and offering the lucky few a brand-new, fascinating way to travel.

Bibliography