Beautiful Aviation Art Slideshow

If you see the fighter-pilot header and/or the post title is in black, click on the title to view the featured image header.

In 2011, when I first uploaded individual slides from the PowerPoint presentations as collected by Maj. Gen Yago F. de Bobadilla, Spanish Air Force, I couldn’t find a way to embed the slide show in a post. My recent collaboration with the webmaster of the Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society, however, has prompted me to upload the entire presentation for viewing.

The process quickly morphed into a perfect example of “The McIntosh Brothers’ Pandora’s Box Syndrome,” in which a task that initially appears to be straightforward proves to be anything but, and that forced me to learn far more than I ever wanted to know about embedding PowerPoint slideshows into a WordPress site.

It should be easy, right? Online tutorials by the millions cover every possible topic imaginable. In this case, however, most of the first page of results focused on problems with achieving my objective, as evidenced by an error message that said, “Content cannot be embedded for security reasons.”

But wait! There are plug-ins that make it easy. So I try a free version of one and encounter the same error. But wait again! The paid version appears to be a possibility, so I spend $29 to find out, and when I try to download the app, here’s the result:

This is a classic example of the syndrome in action, so I try to sidestep the problem by emailing the developer, which produces the following all-too-common “it’s not our fault” response in the midst of Covid-19:

Thanks for contacting us. Your request has been received and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. We currently have reduced staff and a significantly higher volume of enquiries. Our response time could be up to 4 days. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience.

It should come as no surprise that my quota of patience does not include paying for something that can be delivered instantly and having to wait because the download link is broken.

The saga continued with multiple searches and false starts, and finally ended with a video tutorial that allowed me to use Google Slides, which had previously worked, but far less effectively than I wanted because it didn’t embed the presentation on my website.

For visitors interested in the background for the series, I’ve elected to keep the six individual parts previously published. Here are the links to them:

1. https://toshmcintosh.com/2011/04/beautiful-aviation-art-part-one/

2. https://toshmcintosh.com/2011/04/beautiful-aviation-art-part-two/

3. https://toshmcintosh.com/2011/05/beautiful-aviation-art-part-three/

4. https://toshmcintosh.com/2012/07/beautiful-aviation-art-part-four/

5. https://toshmcintosh.com/2012/08/beautiful-aviation-art-part-five/

6. https://toshmcintosh.com/2013/03/beautiful-aviation-art-part-six/

And so, with a restatement of my thanks to Gen. Bobadilla for creating this tribute to the boundless heroism of airmen who took to the skies as warriors in the defense of freedom and defeat the abomination of the Axis Powers, here is the original PowerPoint Slide Show presentation as collected by my friend and fellow fighter pilot Yago, with expanded descriptions of the events added by me.

Note: To view this gorgeous slide show in all its glory, click on the full screen symbol in the toolbar of the Presentation window below. Advance the slides with the left and right arrows in your keyboard, or use the arrows in the lower left corner of the full screen presentation. Exit full screen with the esc key.

Enjoy!

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