This is one of the artist’s favourite naval paintings; it conveys a great feeling of being up there with “02” sweeping over Melbourne as the carrier powers into a fresh breeze. On the deck below, Skyhawks are being manoevred for take off.

The RAN Mk50 Sea Kings, built by Westlands in Britain, were delivered in 1961 and despite their sophistication and power they retain the basic helicopter concept conceived by American designer Igor Sikorsky in 1942, when he came up with his single main rotor plus tail rotor layout. A sketch of the very first aircraft to incorporate the layout–the Sikorsky VS300A, test-flown by Sikorsky himself, is illustrated in the artist’s sketch in the information piece supplied with this reproduction.