The only plausible motivation, that I can think of, for a faker to mock up the aircraft would be to deter industrial espionage. Not for nothing did the Bell XP-59A sport a bogus propeller;
Our aircraft might have sported false panels or fitments during ground trials, alongside the ‘innocent’ racing scheme rather than a military one?
Again I’m just thinking aloud.
UFOs are exactly what they say on the tin: unidentified! If a BA Captain can’t identify what they see then they saw a UFO by default. It doesn’t have to be anything exotic; it is really only the conspiracy theorists and the overly impressionable that scrabble for the most outlandish explanations. I’m always surprised that 1950s – 1980s UFO ‘contactees’ are reasonably well known, and were given media coverage back in the day. They also snapped clear, lucid photographs of UFOs using only primitive technology.
George Adamski:
Paul Villa:
Billy Meier:
None of these photographs stand up to any sort of scrutiny, but these hoaxers were granted book deals, media appearances, interviews galore. Part of me wonders if these guys were unwittingly (or otherwise) exploiting a sort of pervasive Cold War paranoia that gripped the era. The threat was out there, and it was coming to mess with us in shiny chrome spacecraft. I consider if it no coincidence that the appearance of these flying saucers has aged badly; they look exactly like what the future looked like in the ’60s and ’70s, with their domes and chromed fairings.
In an era where most people carry a good-enough quality camera in their pockets, in the form of smart phones, it is odd that nobody is photographing UFOs with such a level of detail and lucidity in 2017. The number of people with access to photographic equipment has increased exponentially, and not just in the West.
Perhaps the rear of the photograph holds some clues?
Flipped, cropped and desaturated:
The left hand stamp seems to say:
??????ERO
BC157
????RCIA (Murcia?)
The stamp (?) fragment at the top right clearly says CAN… Canary Islands (Las Islas Canarias, surely?) or Canada?!?!
A link to the sale of the photograph is found in post #11, as John Boyle points out. The description of the photo, from the site, is:
PHOTO POSTAL FORMAT. SPANISH MILITARY PLANE. CIVIL WAR OR POST-GUARD.
Photography format of a Spanish Military Airplane, I do not know the model and the numbering is blurred. Size 8.5 x 13.5 centimeters. The photograph is not very clear. It is preserved as seen in the photographs.
Google Chrome has bungled the translation a bit, but there isn’t really a lot of information present. I can’t find other items being sold by a specific seller, so I’m a bit puzzled by OP’s claim that “The seller has a group of photos of aircrafts of the spanish air force capted in 08-1941 at San Javier AB as stated almost in one reverse.” That seems like oddly specific information, unless OP had private correspondence with the seller. It seems like the seller(s) on that website simply sell old photographs. Maybe they cruise estate sale and junk shops, or simply knock on doors in small Spanish villages and pay a nominal sum for old photos? Who knows, but there doesn’t seem to be a personal link between the seller(s) and the photographs. For example there are photos of Spanish soldiers who are not identified in any way. Some of these photos look quite private/personal and were clearly sent to people. Some are hand annotated. None of this gives me any reason to believe, necessarily, that the photograph at the top of this thread was taken at San Javier in August 1941. It is an old photograph of an aircraft, which is part of a sale of other old photographs of aircraft. None of the other photos seem similar to our photograph here.
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