"Dilbert Never Allowed for Drift"

The U.S. Navy lost more than 8,000 people in aviation accidents from 1941 to 1946. Safety posters used cartoons and humor to stress the importance of following safety procedures—and the grave consequences of carelessness. The Navy’s Aviation Training Division created two blundering cartoon characters—Dilbert the pilot and Spoiler the mechanic—whose slip-ups endangered lives and equipment. Robert Osborn, the artist, logged more than 400 hours of flying time and interviewed hundreds of naval personnel to make the characters and their mishaps as authentic as possible.

Starting in 1942, the Navy displayed the posters, one at a time, in hangars and ground schools. Each day or two, pilots and mechanics saw a new cartoon featuring a situation directly related to their training. This poster comes from a series focusing on pilot training. A crosswind can push an airplane away from the pilot’s desired course. This effect is called wind drift. To counteract drift, a pilot must turn the aircraft into the wind. In this poster, Dilbert fails to correct for the effects of wind, and he misses his target.

The names of U.S. states and cities were penciled on the edge of this poster. We do not know who wrote them or what they signify.