John Arthur Marsden one of Flights most talented artists passed away at the age of 94 on the 14th of March after a fall. He was one of the cutaway artists of the “Golden Years” The term was conjured up by Bill Gunston and covered the Fifties and early Sixties.
John was born on the 12th January 1929 and went to Leggett’s Way school in Watford. He had a passion for modelling and drawing aircraft from an early age. From school he went to Watford College of Art and from there in 1945 to de Havillands Engine Company in Stag Lane, where he worked in the Technical Publications Department.
He was conscripted into the RAF at 18 and passed out after training at St Athan as a Flight Mechanic. In the service he was based at Scampton and Wyton working on Avro Lincolns.
He went back to de Havillands Engine Company after his service and in 1950 was taken on by Max Millar in Iliffes studio.
Johns first piece of artwork was of a farm tractor. In those early years he worked on motorcycles and even farming equipment like milking parlours and cow sheds. It was on Autocar that he began to make a name for himself working alongside John Ferguson and Vic Berris. He loved drawing Formula One racing cars and on one trip to Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari came onto the shop floor and came over, and putting his hand on John’s shoulder said “Magnifico”. It was also at Ferrari that John experienced his first car ride at over 120mph with the chief road tester.
On the 26th of March 1954 he produced his first cutaway for Flight, it being Percivals Pembroke. Drawing a cutaway from underneath is a difficult task, at the best of times, but it is a real challenge on your first job. The drawing was completed on board in pencil and taken back to the office to finish.
 
In 1962 Flight became Flight International. By that time John was one of the magazine’s top artists. He was the second artist to visit the USA (The first being Arthur Bowbeer). On this visit he went with Neil Harrison to Piper, and then on to Lockheed at Atlanta and Beech, Cessna, and Lear at Wichita. It was at Lear that Bill Lear asked John to do a sketch to amend the design of the windshield of the prototype Learjet; it can still be seen to this day! From there they went on to Douglas, Rockwell, Lockheed Burbank, and Boeing, where he glimpsed the four manufacturers’ mock ups of their SST’s.
It was his visits to Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas that launched his reputation for the large aircraft cutaways. He went on to draw most of the large commercial aircraft that appeared in Flight International.
On his many visits to Boeing the companies’ engineers were constantly amazed that he could, on one visit, go to Douglas and then Boeing, study two large airliners in two weeks and still comprehend it all.
His ’Magnum Opus’ cutaway was definitely the Boeing 747-100 which appeared on the 12th of December 1968. It was printed as a gatefold with a lot of detail sketches. One of the interesting things about this first 747 was the fact that on the starboard outer spoilers he made a mistake and put in five instead of four. A lot of people copied his drawing and of course they copied the mistake too!
 
Two stories tell of John’s abilities to produce a drawing from limited information. The first concerns a trip to the USSR in 1991 with journalist Guy Norris to see the Tupolev Tu-204. The company provided very little information, just a publicity brochure and a glimpse of the fuselage.
John went into the fuselage and counted frames and managed to see the fin and rudder in a test rig.
Guy was worried that there was insufficient information to complete a feature article, but John produced what looked like a convincing drawing.
The second story relates to the Paris Air Show in 1966 where in one of the halls SAAB were showing slides of the JAS 37 Viggen in build.
John sat down on the floor and watched the slides repeatedly, making sketches at the same time. The cutaway appeared in the magazine in April 1967.
At Farnborough in 1967 SAAB sent John an invitation for lunch at their chalet. At lunch on either side of him were two Swedish security men who quizzed him on how he got hold of the information for the drawing.
Some years later SAAB sent out an invitation to Flight International
for one of its staff to visit Linkoping to see the JAS 39. The magazine asked if John could accompany the journalist. The answer came back no!
Bill Sweetman is quoted as saying that 90% of what he learnt about how aircraft were built from hanging around in the artists’ studio.
He was at Boeing Philadelphia when they were doing the XCH-62 Heavy Lift Helicopter and competing in UTTAS (which became Blackhawk). UTTAS had a naval version, and they had some conceptual drawings of the mods,
John was there and looked at the folding tailboom and said: "That won't work". Boeing guys looked. Sure enough, something got tangled with something else if you folded it that way. No doubt some pink faces, but it was redesigned.
John retired in January 1994 and his last cutaway as a staff member, the PW901A APU was printed on the 12th of January 1994.
During his career he drew over 160 aviation cutaways, ships diesel engines for Motorship, and the Eurostar and Shuttle trains for Railway Gazette.
His last large aircraft cutaway, the Airbus A340-600 was completed five years after he had retired from the journal.
 
When John retired, Alan Winn the editor asked Tony Cocklin at British Airways if they could offer an experience flight on Concorde for John.
Tony replied that because he had done so much for the industry throughout his career, they would provide him a VIP return ticket to Washington or New York.