There is this crazy picture of a plane or a boat or both...?
This is just a drawing, I know, but if this aircraft does not exist, is there perhaps a similar looking one in reality?
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Sign up to join this communityThere is this crazy picture of a plane or a boat or both...?
This is just a drawing, I know, but if this aircraft does not exist, is there perhaps a similar looking one in reality?
is there perhaps a similar looking one in reality?
Not really, however the fictional five-deck flying boat depicted is clearly an extrapolation of flying boats of the first half of the 20th century.
Visually, the Short Empire class is the most similar:
Photo of a Short Empire, Public Domain
Photo of a Short Sunderland, CCASA3.0 Nick.D
The largest all-metal flying boat developed for civilian passenger service was the Saunders-Roe Princess which only had two passenger-decks.
Photo of a Saunders-Roe Princess, Public Domain
The largest flying boat was probably the Hughes H-4 Hercules, popularly known as the Spruce Goose. It was designed for military transport (hence no windows). I believe it would have accomodated both troops and military vehicles but probably no more than two decks.
This was part of an ad campaign for Timken Roller Bearings in 1946. It is a drawing by George Shepherd.
The only successful plane with inhabited wing might have been the Junkers G.38, (which was explored in Germany by the character in studio Ghibli "the Wind Rises".)
That 5-decker design is outdone, amongst never-built flying boats, by Norman Bel Geddes' Airliner No. 4 design concept from 1929, with nine decks: