Wim Bosma artwork • watercolour • drawing • previously for sale Airport Schiphol with the KLM Douglas DC-3 'Ibis'

As a painter in the 1930s, Wim Bosma was strongly attracted to the 'miracles' of modern technology. He therefore liked to paint and watercolor things such as railway viaducts, trains, boats and flying machines in a new-business, realistic style. Here Bosma painted the Ibis: the first KLM aircraft of the Douglas DC-3 type, which was delivered to KLM on 21 September 1936. The Ibis was used until 1940 on the first official scheduled service to Le Bourget near Paris and on the Amsterdam - Batavia route. From July 1940, the registration of the Ibis was changed after the aircraft flying the Amsterdam-Shoreham service could not return to the Netherlands due to the German invasion. Together with other KLM aircraft that had fled to England, the Ibis was deployed on the Bristol-Lisbon civil passenger service. The Ibis was the only one on this line to be attacked three times by German fighter pilots within seven months. In the first two attacks, all occupants were unharmed, despite heavy damage to the aircraft. But during the last attack, on June 1, 1943, the plane disappeared as BOAC Flight 777, with thirteen passengers and four crew members on board, in the Bay of Biscay.