Friday Film: Grampaw Pettibone Gripes (1945)

About Grampaw Pettibone:

In 1943, Lt. Robert Osborn, in collaboration with Commander Seth Warner, created the “sage of safety” character for a column in the BUAER News Letter produced by the Bureau of Aeronautics to address the increasing aircraft mishap rate. Osborn’s illustrations commingled with Warner’s narrative accounts of aircraft accidents. Following a description of a mishap, the old curmudgeon aviator railed at young fliers for making stupid mistakes. More than one aviator caught in a pinch in the sky has suddenly remembered a timely pearl of wisdom from Gramps that helped the flier avoid a costly- and perhaps fatal-error.

Osborn is also the creator of more than 2,000 of the famed “Dilbert the Pilot” and “Spoiler the Mechanic” posters. These safety gems were liberally displayed in hangars and aboard ships during WW II and into the 1950s. In addition, he produced “Sense” pamphlets, which gave WW II fliers common sense safety rules on aviation subjects, such as “Flight Deck Sense.”