Beschreibung:

2], 2-4, 19, [20] mimeographed leaves. With seven folding tables, four silver gelatin photographs, each 18x25 cm, (8x10"). (4to), cloth-backed cardboard covers [Hecho en Cuba] , typed label mounted on front cover, slide clasp folder. With a typed signed letter from Carlos Coca Oliver on Empresa Consolidada letterhead laid-in . First edition of this rare and early report on the progress of the Cuban Airline Company under the Communist government of Fidel Castro on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis—in 1962, “Año de la Planificacion.” The photographs show three of the Company’s aircraft on the tarmac, and one view of a plane in the air (close-up). No copies located on OCLC. The report details the business opportunities, and difficulties faced by the State Airline in the early 1960s, describing the different aircraft available, the numbers of flights, amounts of freight shipped nationally and internationally, as well as the impact and efforts of the National Revolutionary Militias on the Cuban National Airline. There are detailed reports on the efforts to find spare parts, and keep the airplanes flying, and how the consolidation of many different private airlines and freight carriers resulted in a variety of aircraft to be serviced, including one DC-3 airplanes, four Curtiss C-46, one Douglas DC-4, a Super G Constellation, Viscount 818, four Britannia 318, and even nine Soviet Ilyushin 14s. The photographs each include explanatory sheets for Douglas DC-3, the Bristol Britannia 318 (the British aircraft manufacturer had a special arrangement with the Cuban Revolutionary government beginning in 1958 to maintain this aircraft). The C-45 Commandos were transport aircraft used as passenger airliners, but then replaced largely by C-47s, but the rugged aircraft continue to operate today; and the Ilyushin 14 was a rugged and unusually reliable plane preferred by poorer countries with poor quality airfields, such as Cuba.