To the modern reader used to visualizing the frail pioneering aircraft of the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and others, the Red Cloud from the Tom Swift series seems utterly fantastic — the stuff of science fiction. However, as was often the case, the descriptions were not pure fantasy but rather extensions of concepts and inventions described in magazines and newspapers. […]

Tom Swift invented many remarkable vehicles that carried him and his friends on their adventures. The Red Cloud was used in many of the early stories of the Tom Swift Sr. series.