Tiger's Revenge & the pilot's story behind air combat art

[Skyraider3D]

Hi all! Here is my latest artwork: "Tiger's Revenge"



Earlier this year I was commissioned to make an artwork for veteran P-51 Mustang pilot Lt. William S. "Tiger" Lyons, who flew with the 357th FS/355th FG during World War 2. I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr Lyons over the telephone and pick his brain on his experiences over Germany during 1944/45. He told me about several air battles in which he took part, and I decided to portray the one in which he scored his second victory, on 9 February 1945. Rather than telling you what happened, I have added a cropped sound recording from this interview, in which Mr Lyons vividly describes his air battle with a German Messerschmitt 109! On this day he was flying wingman for Lt. Edward J. Moroney. Click the image below to download or listen to the sound recording.



The "Tiger's Revenge" artwork was presented to Mr Lyons during the 355th Fighter Group reunion by Peter Randall of the Little Friends website, last October in Philadelphia. Here is a photo of Mr Lyons signing the prints. Below a photo of Mr Lyons holding one of the prints:



Mr Lyons signed twenty large canvas prints for me, which are available here:
http://www.digitalaviationart.com/tigersrevenge_le.html
The prints are museum-quality giclee canvas prints at approximately A2 size.
If interested, don't wait too long - there are only seven pilot-signed prints left!
For those interested in a more affordable print, normal prints are available here as well:
http://www.digitalaviationart.com/tigersrevenge.html


For those interested in seeing how "Tiger's Revenge" was made, I have created a video which shows the buildup of the layers, which resulted in the final artwork. A high and low quality Quicktime has been uploaded. Hopefully it will be of interest:




Last but definitely not least, "Tiger's Revenge" is currently exhibited in the Military Aviation Museum in Soesterberg, The Netherlands, amongst more aviation art by Wiek Luijken, John Wallin and myself. For the three of us this is our first exhibition, and needless to say we're very proud of this milestone in our aviation art careers! Many thanks to Wiek and the museum for making this possible.

[drgondog]

Ronnie - I saw this at the reunion - very nice work!

Bill

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Bill. Much appreciated.

I was expecting some more people would find at least the interview recording of interest...?

[drgondog]

Ronnie - I couldn't open the video and very much interested - do you have it via your website?

Regards,

Bill

PS were you able to get the WZI pics you needed for 2 March mission?

[Skyraider3D]

Originally Posted by drgondog

Ronnie - I couldn't open the video and very much interested - do you have it via your website?

Did the videos refuse to open (you'll need the free Quicktime 7 player) or did the link not work at all? In the latter case, perhaps the server was temporarily down (it's somewhat unreliable at times!) - although then the images wouldn't show either.

Originally Posted by drgondog

PS were you able to get the WZI pics you needed for 2 March mission?

More or less!

[Ruy Horta]

Great piece of aviation art, as usual Ronnie!

As for the Quicktime movie, it worked fine - at least the hires version I tried.

At 4mb it may just be a slow connection?

[drgondog]

Ronnie -I tried again and it worked.. very nice.

Question - I want to do about 30 side elevations for ABD-vol II. Is there a public source where I could find same scale side elevations for P-47D, P-51B and D?

Regards,

Bill

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks Ruy!
I'm glad you and Bill took the time to reply, or else I'd be having a monologue here!



Bill, how accurate do you need them? I have yet to come across accurate drawings of the P-51B, although I believe Charles Neely made a set, based on the factory drawings.
I can get you decent drawings for the P-51D as well as the razorback P-47D.
A good online source for drawings is http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw_fw.html#7 but beware that these are most likely all copyrighted and often not entirely accurate. For instance none of the Corsair drawings are close enough...

Silly question perhaps, but what does ABD stand for?

[Frank Olynyk]

ABD = Angels, Bulldogs and Dragons, of course, although I suspect Bill means 2nd Edition, not Vol. 2.

Frank.

[Skyraider3D]

Ah yes I could've guessed