About This Stamp
In 2005 the U.S. Postal Service issued a pane of 20 stamps (10 designs) entitled American Advances in Aviation. Building on the popular Classic American Aircraft collection issued in 1997, the planes chosen for this stamp pane illustrate American innovations and technological contributions to military, commercial, and general aviation during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.
The 10 aircraft featured on the stamps are: Boeing’s 247 and B-29 Superfortress; Consolidated’s PBY Catalina and B-24 Liberator; Lockheed’s P-80 Shooting Star; Grumman’s F6F Hellcat; Republic’s P-47 Thunderbolt; Northrop’s YB-49 Flying Wing; Engineering and Research Corporation’s Ercoupe 415; and Beechcraft’s 35 Bonanza. Depicted in the header illustration are the Hughes H-1 racer (left) and Boeing’s YB-52 Stratofortress (right).
Used with the permission of Boeing.
Art Director & Designer
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.