Little Johnny Jet is a 1953 Metro Goldwyn Mayer cartoon short directed by Tex Avery about a "family" of airplanes. This is also comparable to the 1952 short, One Cab's Family. The short was also nominated for the Academy Awards for best animated short but lost to the Tom and Jerry short Johann Mouse.
Synopsis
The cartoon follows the story of a B-29 Bomber named John, who is married to a Douglas DC-3 named Mary. John can't seem to find work at any airport because they're looking for jets. Mary later reveals that she's going to have a baby, and needing to find work to support his family, Johnny heads off to reenlist in the Air Force, but finds even they won't take him back in, as they're looking for jets as well, which further angers him. When Junior finally arrives, John is happy to be a father and have a child...until it turns out that Junior is a jet as well, which makes John lose his mind. When reading the paper the next day, the Hot Air News, John sees the ad for a jet contest held by the United States Government where the winner gets a huge contract. Plenty fed up with jets, he goes to enter the contest as well to try to show them up. Realizing that risk that her husband is putting himself, Mary goes after John. En route to the contest, John meets a B-29 general who smokes Douglas MacArthur's trademark corncob pipe and has Bataan written amidst his five stars. When John asks him, the general declines to enter the contest and states, parodying MacArthur's farewell address to the U.S. Congress, that "older planes never fly, they just fade away," before literally fading away. At the contest, John lines up at the starting line with the rest of the jets. Mary and Junior catch up to him and Mary tries convincing John not to go through with the race, but John refuses to listen to her. While this was happening, Junior gets out of the baby buggy and gets in the fuselage of John, and by the time Mary realizes that her son's there, it's too late. At the green flag, the jets all but disappear while John, in comparison, sputters badly to take off and run the race. Within no time, his engines have had enough and detach from his body and fly away on their own, sending him into a nose dive for Earth. Junior realizes what's happening and after a brief struggle with the door, manages to get out of him in time to grab him by the tail and save him. When John notices that he hasn't crashed, he looks back and sees his son holding his tail and flying him along. After happily praising him for saving him, they then kick it into high gear and run the race, tearing past the other contestants, and are shown flying around the world, going by certain landmarks with funny things happening, and a few non-landmark things as well. They easily win the race and the government contract...for Junior. While John's happy for his son, his joy is soon crushed when the government tells him that they need ten-thousand more just like him—John realizes that he and Mary have some serious procreating to do.
