Flying was all the rage in 1929, two years after Charles Lindbergh soloed across the Atlantic, the year Bill Bibichkow and Sam Goldenberg, high school students from a low-income area of Chicago, opened the Comet Model Airplane & Supply Co.
From an initial investment of $5, the boys turned a few sticks of balsa wood, music wire, tissue and glue into a multi-million dollar business, much to the delight of model builders across America.
In a motion picture style reminiscent of the newsreels of the 1930s and ‘40s, THE COMET MODEL NEWS presents the history and the heyday of one of America’s top model airplane kit manufacturers. See how Comet Model rose from sparse beginnings in the back of Bill’s father’s tailor shop to a company with 20 salesmen and 6,000 dealers nationwide.
Go on the field with celebrated model airplane designer Carl Goldberg and watch him fly his innovative, contest winning models. Be privy to the marriage goings-on at Comet, and the secret work the company does for the military after Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Model airplane meets, Comet Model events and profiles of the men and women who made Comet soar are pictured in 8mm color and 16mm black-and-white film footage shot between 1937 and 1941, still photographs from corporate publicity campaigns and images from company catalogs.
Within the context of its time—from Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic through the Great Depression and America’s entry into World War II—this story of the Comet Model Airplane & Supply Co. is as personal as its founders’ desires to fly like Lindbergh and as universal as immigrants in America achieving the American dream.