Off we go into the wild blue yonder.

From the crude engineering of the Wright brothers’ Model B to the present-day sleek fighter planes of the U.S. Air Force, aircraft have an important and romantic place in our history.

We recall with praise and patriotism the daring of our fliers and their planes in peace and in war.

In 1997, the U.S. Postal Service paid tribute to both military and civilian planes with a pane of 20 stamps (32-cent denomination) titled “Classic American Aircraft.”

The planes depicted are the Wright brothers’ Model B, the Mustang, the Cub, the Vega, the Alpha, the B-10, the Corsair, the Stratojet, the Gee Bee, the Stagerwing, the Flying Fortress, the Stearman, the Constellation, the Lightning, the Peashooter, the Tri-Motor, the DC-3, the 314 Clipper, the Jenny and the Wildcat.

Noted in the illustrations are the Curtis JN-4 “Jenny” and the Ford Tri-Motor. The JN-4, originally a trainer for World War I pilots, became an official airmail plane in the 1920s and 1930s. The Ford was one of the great successes of the 1920s aviation boom. Nicknamed the “Tin Goose,” the Tri-Motor was an all-metal aircraft, new to that period.

The Jenny appeared previously on a 1968 issue commemorating 50 years of air mail and on a 1918 issue that produced a famous error with the Jenny inverted within the stamp frame.