The Lost Famous Fighters Box Set

In the early 1990s, I was asked by Chris Johnson, (son of AVM ‘Johnnie’ Johnson), if I would be interested in working with him and his father on some proposed aviation art projects. ‘Johnnie’ had been one of my childhood heroes as we were both from Leicestershire, so I said yes immediately and spent the next ten years working with them on some memorable projects with some of the world’s most famous fighter pilots.

The first project we worked on was the Famous Fighters series. The idea was simple. Johnnie knew pretty much every living famous fighter pilot from WW2, so they commissioned me to paint a picture of their aircraft, which they then published as an A3 sized poster for the pilots to sign. Chris would pack the prints into his car and drive around Europe, meeting the legendary pilots and having them sign the prints in their own homes. It worked very well indeed, in fact Chris even took prints to the USA to get American pilots in the series!
They were printed in a single limited edition of 1000 and the first few sold out very quickly. By the time Johnnie passed away in 2001, we had produced 12 prints in the series which seemed like a good moment to stop.

And that was that, I continued publishing my aviation art prints and Chris scaled down his signed print business as the old prints sold out and veterans slowly faded away.
Now, some thirty years after we launched the Famous Fighter series, we have something very special.

Chris contacted me a couple of years ago asking if I was interested in buying up his remaining stock so he could officially retire. As it was all veteran signed, I agreed to take what I could and went to have a look through the packets of prints. In the corner I was stunned to see a collection of small A3 sized prints, wrapped in the usual brown paper. As far as I knew, all the Famous Fighters had sold out years ago, yet here were several packets, apparently unopened since being signed 30 years ago!

I looked through them and found that there were six different subjects plus a smaller quantity of a seventh.

Needless to say, I purchased the entire set off him and that is what you see before you today, a small set of very rare prints, with the original signatures of some of the world’s most famous fighter pilots.  The signatories are;

Group Captain Peter Townsend

Air Vice Marshal J E ‘Johnnie’ Johnson

Group Captain John ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham

Generalleutnant Gunther Rall

Generalleutnant Hannes Trautloft

Oberstleutnant Hans-Joachim Jabs

If you Google the series, you’ll see that they are only now available when they appear in auctions, so this is a unique chance to purchase a set of six directly from the artist who painted them. They were originally priced at £50 each, so this set represents incredible value for money for such a rare set of veteran signed prints.

These prints come in a luxurious presentation box with fact sheets for each pilot that can be attached to the back of a frame if you choose to frame the prints.

We have just fifty of these very rare sets available and I have signed and numbered them accordingly.

As a special offer to early purchasers, we have a limited number of a seventh Famous Fighter print, signed by American Ace Don Lopez and depicting his P-40.  One of these prints will be included FREE in these sets whilst stocks last.