Imaginary mergers...

The past two decades have seen some of the biggest players in the aviation industry merge into large entities. McDonnell and Douglas, which had merged during the 1960s, became an integral part of their arch-rival Boeing; Lockheed, Martin and General Dynamics's aviation branch became Lockheed Martin; Teledyne Ryan and Scaled Composites became part of Northrop Grumman. Only a few companies stand their own ground, such as Bell and Sikorsky for helicopters.

Now what if other mergers had taken place? Other combinations? And at other times in history? A quick look at the vintage logos of Northrop, North American Aviation and Grumman showed obvious commonality which I though would be cool to explore.

Merging the Northrop and NAA logos resulted in the imaginary NAN Company (right, top). Then by further merging the NAN Co.'s logo with Grumman's own, I arrived at the perfect mix of the three: the logo of the NANG Corporation! (right, bottom)

Some more imaginary mergers below: Lockheed Martin (if they had merged during the 1940s); Boeing Air France (just for the visual fun of it, because I can't really see a big American manufacturer taking over a French national airline); BeechCessna (very similar lettering made it a natural); and Grumman Vought, the merger of the two most dedicated purveyors of naval aircraft in America.