Paul Manship was first commissioned by the Fairmount Park Art Association to produce the Aero Memorial in Philadelphia’s Aviator Park in 1939. The final monument was eventually completed in 1948 and was a triumphant composition that paid tribute to the airmen who served in World War I. The present work is a bronze maquette of a proposed monument design Manship completed in 1941. In a photograph of the artist in his New York studio, Manship can be seen modeling the life-size plastilene of the same subject. During this period Manship executed a number of drawings as well as studies in bronze and plaster with aviation symbols which often centered heroic figures on top of stylized cloud bases. Examples of these aviation monument studies can be found in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., while others were destroyed by the artist, including the large plastilene the present work was modeled after