1941 San Francisco Airplane Video Shows Historic City From Above

If there's one thing we love, it's getting a glimpse back into San Francisco's past. And this recently unearthed video is one of our favorites.

Shot from an airplane circling above the city in 1941, the full-color video gives a gorgeous bird's eye view of the Bay Area, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Francisco skyline to Angel Island to the farms of the Central Valley.

SFist takes note of the classic vintage uniforms by the plane's pilot and flight attendants once the videographer steps off the plane.

The video is taken from the indispensable Prelinger Archives, a collection of thousands of non-professional and promotional videos from the past century of moving pictures.

The Prelinger Archives was also the source of a spectacular 1955 video shot by filmmaker Tullilo Pellergrini during a series of automobile rides around the city.

A longer cut of the video, complete with a car voyage down Market Street and shots of historic local sites like Coit Tower, is embedded below: