I am not a guitar nut but, I found it interesting that the Stratocaster name was inspired by an aircraft.
I didn't express that quite right but I'll press on. I assume the aircraft was the Stratocruiser, though that was never a very elegant looking aircraft (
http://www.aviation-history.com/boeing/377.html ) so it must have been the name alone and the fact that air travel (trans-Atlantic air travel, in particular) was regarded as very glamourous in those days.
I well remember the Pan Am and BOAC Stratocruisers at Heathrow or LAP, as it was known back then (LAP for London Airport). Quite apart from their bulbous shape (they were double-deckers - nothing's new), they were lumbering beasts that often seemed to (or maybe had to) land first on their nosewheels - that is before the main wheels hit the deck. Inelegant, maybe, but I remember them fondly.
Now to Guy Fletcher. A more attractive plane than the Stratocruiser at the time was the Super Constellation, as shown on one of Guy''s diary pages [
http://www.guyfletcher.co.uk/index.php/2013mkeuro/22nd_July_2013_-_Saint_Julien_en_Genevois ]. I assume that this example was on the ground at Geneva when they got there, because Guy offers no explanation of its inclusion that I can find. Here's the plane:
http://www.conniesurvivors.com/N73544.htmUnlike the Strat (and, yes, that's what they were often called), the Super Connie looked absolutely wonderful in the air. With a long cigar-shaped but attractively curved fuselage and its triple fins, it had long nosewheel undercarriage that made it look rather like a long-legged bird (tail and all) as it came in to land. Many years ago, I recall Roger McGuinn, of The Byrds, waxing lyrical about the Super Constellation in some interview and, by golly, he was right.
The Super Connie more closely matched the curves of a Stratocaster but maybe the name was not quite right.
