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So You Really Want To Know What Air Combat Was Like?

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Like many here probably, I snap up any WWI air combat films I come across. Think I have most of them eg Wings, The Dawn Patrol, The Blue Max (my favourite), Aces High, Hell's Angels, Flyboys, Ace of Aces and Von Richthofen and Brown.

 

As far as filming pleasure goes ie storyline, characters etc the Blue Max is tops for me. Followed by The Dawn Patrol and Wings.

 

But I've always wondered which one was the most accurate at depicting actual combat. Then I came across this post over at The Aerodrome by Alex Revell. For those who don't know Alex, he is a prolific writer on WWI air warfare. He has been fortunate to have met many WWI pilots. The Post is part of a Thread discussing the book "No Parachute" by Arthur Gould Lee.

 

Lee was president of C&C (the magazine Cross and Cockade) in the early 1970's. I suppose he would have been in his middle seventies then, but he was very lively and active. I first met him in the late 60s. I remember discussing with him how in films such as The Blue Max, pilots in combat, with someone on their tail, just kept looking round and never seemed to take any evasive action. He agreed. Sometime later we had a screening of "Hells Angels" at a C&C meeting. In the first dogfight scene, viewed from a distance, when all the opposing aeoplanes come together and immediately break up into a whirling mass of dots, he tapped me on the shoulder - he was sitting behind me - and said 'That's what it was like, Alex, that's exactly what it was like.'

 

Now I'm going to pull out 'Hells Angels' and watch it again. With greater appreciation. :)

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Funny - I had the feeling, that "Hell's Angels" had some intense and serious looking air combat scenes.

 

Even the close-ups of the pilots, although partly overacted, may be pretty close to RL.

 

And Arthur Gould Lee also made the mistake in the first encounter, to look behind him, when he heard

 

and saw the hostile gun fire.

 

According to Arthur, the clashes often were over extremely quick, and he could still not find anyone,

 

neither friend nor foe. It doesn't seem that they did much extreme turn fighting. Attacking pass and gone.

 

Although, I'm not half through the book - maybe they come to that later?

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Alex and I traded emails about that very statement and I told him just how lucky a man I thought he was, to have had the chance to know and talk with such people as AGL. Very, very lucky indeed.

 

.

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I just made a post here a few weeks ago posting clips from Hell's Angels. Marvelous aerial sequences, watching them sends a chill down your spine because you realize that is exactly what it looked like back then. Nobody has seen dogfights like that since, nor will they again, so Hell's Angels to my knowledge is the only way to see a taste of what those planes really looked like when they were mixing it up in the empty blue back in 1918.

 

I mean, come on. Hughes put the camera up in the real Fokker DVII, SE5s, and Camels themselves and filmed them fighting from the cockpit. No CGI, no matter how good it is, will ever be able to top that.

Edited by Javito1986

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4 died in total, and Hughes himself was badly injured filming the an aerial sequence the other pilots refused to attempt because they knew the plane would crash.

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... to have had the chance to know and talk with such people as AGL. Very, very lucky indeed.

So true, Lou - a chance that is now forever gone. I thought similarly about Michael Schmeelke's more than lucky coincidence

 

of meeting Viktor Schobinger, former member and ace of Jasta 12 (the "blacktails"). He talked about his work on his book

 

about Jasta 12, in his kitchen with a friend, and mentioned, that he would like to find Viktor Schobinger, who had been one

 

of the Jastas Staffelführer (CO?). Schmeelke's wife stood by the sink and heard that, and she mentioned, that an old man

 

of that name was living near them - she had met him at the baker shop.

 

Schmeelke got in contact with Schobinger, and got a lot of detail, facts and fotos first hand now. How lucky he was there!

 

 

 

 

Nobody has seen dogfights like that since, nor will they again, so Hell's Angels to my knowledge is the only way to see a taste

 

of what those planes really looked like when they were mixing it up in the empty blue back in 1918.

 

... Hughes put the camera up in the real Fokker DVII, SE5s, and Camels themselves and filmed them fighting from the cockpit.

 

No CGI, no matter how good it is, will ever be able to top that.

 

 

If only those CGI artists would watch this old material with open eyes, that would help a lot already.

 

 

Edited by Olham

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All I can say is thank god we'll never know for real...and neither will our Children

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