Running with WOFF - And a Picture

[Wayfarer 5]

After downloading AMD's Dual Core Optimiser I suddenly appear to be running WOFF ... properly, at last.  To celebrate, I finally got to grips with photosharing and have updated my BOC badge, and present the picture below;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is the first representation of early WW1 aerial combat that I ever remember seeing - we are talking the mid 1960s here - and I have been trying to track it down for years.  It is from Ladybird Book's 'Story of Flight'.  The following page had a fairly conventional picture of a rather pale green Sopwith Camel shooting down an all red Albatros, but this picture always fascinated me and there is a definite strand that links this illustration with me spending the last 11 weeks trying to get WOFF to work on our computer.

 

I am not sure it exactly represents any genuine aircraft types (don't know if any eindecker pilots took off with hand held weapons) but I still find it has something.  The Eindecker pilot still seems rather cool and unperturbed (his goggles actually freaked me out somewhat when I was little - they seemed insect like) whilst the whirling propeller and poses of the pusher crew still seem to have an urgency about them - like they feel they have something to be worried about.

 

So I still personally find it has kept it's sense of drama for me and when, in OFF, those first virtual Eindeckers came down on me from out of a blue late summer sky you can be sure it took me right back to this picture, and when I've downloaded my 'Fokker Scourge' I'm sure it will again.

Edited March 11, 2014 by Wayfarer

[Mr_Dirt 1]

Glad you are up and running Wayfarer. Did you find the memory you were looking for? I am sorry I did not have what you needed. I upgraded my computer by building a new one. I am just coming to grips with Windows 7, coming from XP. I hope everything works for you. Good Luck

[Olham 164]

Thank you for sharing your story about how it all got started by this picture, Wayfarer!

As a graphic designer, I can see it's intriguing qualities; and as a WW1 air combat sim fan,

I can understand why it impressed you so much.

But there is more to your story; that first touch with something new and fascinating,

which we only have "early on", when everything is still new and excitingly unknown territory.

 

For me, my first contacts with WW1 aviation was an AIRFIX model, and then the film poster

for "Von Richthofen and Brown" by Roger Corman (1971).

The poster made me watch the film, and after that I was drawing lots of dogfight scenes,

but the model was even earlier, and it has it's own story.

 

At one of my visits to the only model shop in town, I saw in a vitrine two plastic models in the

scale 1:48, which had been assembled and painted by a real masterly hand - they were an

S.E.5a and a Supermarine Spitfire Mk. I.

I went in and asked, but they said they were not for sale.

But I was hooked, and like a hound I came snooping around that vitrine and the two models

again and again for weeks, until one day the decoration had changed - other models had

taken that place.

I went in to ask again, and I must have been quite annoying, so the lady called up the owner

of the shop, and he was finally willing to sell them to me - for a price I could not afford from

my small pocket money. So I went home and made my mum lend me the money (I had to pay

it back over many weeks); and then I went back and bought the two models and carefully

carried them home.

 

I still remember clearly, that I was wondering over a long time (and actually still today), why

these British planes both had a kind of eggshell colour on the undersides, while all German

craft seemed to have a light sky blue - the S.E.5a more yellowish; the Spit with a tint of green

or turquoise in it. The upper camo colours were also different. While the Germans used gray

and dark gray-greens, this Spit was earth and green, which I found more sympathic looking;

and the S.E.5a had that deep English green.

I found the Spitfire more elegant looking than the Messerschmidt Bf109; but this bulky S.E.5a

was not obviously elegant, sleek or hot looking - but I found it sexy somehow.

 

I was fascinated by that, and it added to my feelings, that the British were somewhat different

to us; interestingly different; that they had their own ways to approach things.

And some years later I went over there on my first new motorbike, and found a country quite

different to Germany - delightfully different actually!

Edited March 12, 2014 by Olham

[rjw 47]

Thank you for sharing your story about how it all got started by this picture, Wayfarer!

As a graphic designer, I can see it's intriguing qualities; and as a WW1 air combat sim fan,

I can understand why it impressed you so much.

But there is more to your story; that first touch with something new and fascinating,

which we only have "early on", when everything is still new and excitingly unknown territory.

 

For me, my first contacts with WW1 aviation was an AIRFIX model, and then the film poster

for "Von Richthofen and Brown" by Roger Corman (1971).

The poster made me watch the film, and after that I was drawing lots of dogfight scenes,

but the model was even earlier, and it has it's own story.

 

At one of my visits to the only model shop in town, I saw in a vitrine two plastic models in the

scale 1:48, which had been assembled and painted by a real masterly hand - they were an

S.E.5a and a Supermarine Spitfire Mk. I.

I went in and asked, but they said they were not for sale.

But I was hooked, and like a hound I came snooping around that vitrine and the two models

again and again for weeks, until one day the decoration had changed - other models had

taken that place.

I went in to ask again, and I must have been quite annoying, so the lady called up the owner

of the shop, and he was finally willing to sell them to me - for a price I could not afford from

my small pocket money. So I went home and made my mum lend me the money (I had to pay

it back over many weeks); and then I went back and bought the two models and carefully

carried them home.

 

I still remember clearly, that I was wondering over a long time (and actually still today), why

these British planes both had a kind of eggshell colour on the undersides, while all German

craft seemed to have a light sky blue - the S.E.5a more yellowish; the Spit with a tint of green

or turquoise in it. The upper camo colours were also different. While the Germans used gray

and dark gray-greens, this Spit was earth and green, which I found more sympathic looking;

and the S.E.5a had that deep English green.

I found the Spitfire more elegant looking than the Messerschmidt Bf109; but this bulky S.E.5a

was not obviously elegant, sleek or hot looking - but I found it sexy somehow.

 

I was fascinated by that, and it added to my feelings, that the British were somewhat different

to us; interestingly different; that they had their own ways to approach things.

And some years later I went over there on my first new motorbike, and found a country quite

different to Germany - delightfully different actually!

Olham;

 

The feelings, emotions and inquisitiveness you express is something we all can relate to. I wonder if you still have those two models. I know some old items from my youth evoke old memories whenever I look at or handle them. The mind is an amazing storehouse of information which is easily indexed by these items resulting in immediate recall.

 

Thanks for the dissertation sir!

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Wonderful personal back stories Wayfarer and Olham, many thanks for sharing them with us here.  In many ways they are reminiscent of my own beginning interest in WWI aviation.

 

.

[Olham 164]

Thank you guys!

Robert, no, I'm afraid the models "went the path of all that's earthly" (as we say in German).

We moved twice within 4 years back in those days, the models got damaged in all the commotion,

and then came my apprenticeship, then my army time, and finally I went to study in Berlin.

I don't really know what became of them - I guess my mum threw a lot away from childhood days.

[von Baur 54]

Olham, my models I built myself. Revell 1/32 scale. A Camel, Dr1, and SPAD XIII in the series, as well as WWII planes. But it was the early birds that really fascinaated me. I had several of each. Drilled bullet holes in some, put electric motors in others. The best four or five I gave to the local hobby shop where I'd bought them when I joined the Air Force. They were on display there until the owner sold the shop, which he did while I was out of state, so I couldn't reclaim them. It's ok, though.

 

BUT, I also had a comic book collection which I told my parents to throw away when they were cleaning out the attic in 1974. Mint condition of most Marvel titles from the mid-60's through early 70's. Some series from their first issues. A few years later the comic book craze his, but it was too late. That collection probably would have fetched several thousand dollars, maybe as high as six-figures. That hurt.

[Olham 164]

I also had a comic book collection which I told my parents to throw away when they were cleaning out the attic in 1974. Mint condition of most Marvel titles from the mid-60's through early 70's. Some series from their first issues. A few years later the comic book craze his, but it was too late. That collection probably would have fetched several thousand dollars, maybe as high as six-figures. That hurt.

 

Uuuhhh!!! Yeah, those would have been keepers!

But that's life - we make decisions, and later we regret some of them.

Today I would treat those two models better; they'd have a good place near my "cockpit".

My comics survived everything so far, although my very first "Tim & Struppi" book [Tintin & Snowy] is falling apart now.

Bought it second-hand in my childhood days - "Explorers on the Moon" was the title.

Not long after getting it, mankind really made that 'giant leap'.

Edited March 13, 2014 by Olham

[Wayfarer 5]

As it happens the first Airfix model I saw made was the Fokker Dr1.  I was only about three or four and my father said if I chose one he would make it - I didn't really understand what a model kit was but, being in the days when they were sold in transparent plastic bags,  I was attracted by the red plastic of the kit.

The WW1 aircraft models I made in my later teens were only thrown out from my Mom's loft in the last couple of years.  Even then I left them for her to do it because I felt a faint pang at the thought of getting rid of them!

[JimAttrill 24]

Does anyone remember those balsa wood aircraft kits?  They were not easy to make and did not fly well because they were true scale which meant the wing area was too small.  I spent hours and hours making a FW190 D-9 'Dora neun' and for some reason I painted it bright yellow.  I was reading 'The Big Show' at the time which described that as maybe the best fighter of the whole war.  Was there a famous pilot of WWII who flew an all-yellow FW190?   I never flew my FW because I didn't want to break it

Much later I went to Germany with the RAF Harriers 1970-73.  We were once camped in a field and found nice little clearings in the surrounding woods where we could park the Harriers without cutting any trees (which is a big NO NO in Germany).  An old guy appeared and I talked to him in my school German.  It turned out the clearings had been made for Me109s in 1944!  Luckily the Harriers had a very small wingspan. 

We also operated from a petrol station on a new but unused stretch of autobahn.   The 'enemy' (mostly Phantoms and Starfighters) never spotted us. 

[Olham 164]

Was there a famous pilot of WWII who flew an all-yellow FW190?

 

AFAIK there wasn't.

But yellow was a general marking colour for German aircraft.

I guess they had the same meaning as the b/w wing stripes on Allied craft at D-Day: to tell friend from foe.

 

...we could park the Harriers without cutting any trees (which is a big NO NO in Germany).  

 

Well, the trees produce the oxygen we breathe. And we wouldn't cut our lungs, would we?

Maybe for a Canadian, some trees wouldn't mean so much - they have plenty of trees on plenty of space.

Germany is very small compared to that - we must be more careful with ours.

 

An old guy appeared and I talked to him in my school German. 

It turned out the clearings had been made for Me109s in 1944!  Luckily the Harriers had a very small wingspan.

 

Funny - guy fighter guys found the same space suiting, that the WW2 generation had already chosen before.

 

 

We also operated from a petrol station on a new but unused stretch of autobahn.   

The 'enemy' (mostly Phantoms and Starfighters) never spotted us.

 

Gee, I would have liked to watch your takeoffs and landings! I never knew such manoeuvres happened in Germany.

They are usually very strict and specific about what's allowed for air traffic and aircraft.

Did the civil aviation control ever know, that you guys were there?

Edited March 14, 2014 by Olham

[JimAttrill 24]

 

Gee, I would have liked to watch your takeoffs and landings! I never knew such manoeuvres happened in Germany.

They are usually very strict and specific about what's allowed for air traffic and aircraft.

Did the civil aviation control ever know, that you guys were there?

 

I reckon they must have although we were normally far away from civilian airfields.  But I really don't know as I just looked after the engines.  The Harrier could take off from grass in about 200m Short Take Off.   Didn't do the grass much good when they put the nozzles down.   In the summer we would get covered in dust.

At another time we were parked close to the Autobahn to Hamburg up north somewhere and would watch the F104s streaking down the Autobahn and not noticing us a few hundred metres away under the trees!   The pilots told me that when flying VFR the Autobahns were the favourite navigation aids.  I'm not sure who was officially the enemy but we treated all aircraft the same.  I don't think they ever found us, which doesn't say much for their observation.

 

(We were based at Wildenrath which is close to Mönchengladbach and Roermond in Holland.  The airfield is now a test track for Siemens railways). 

Edited March 14, 2014 by JimAttrill

[Olham 164]

I don't think they ever found us, which doesn't say much for their observation.

 

Well, I guess itis very hard to find VTOL aircraft in a highly industrialised, dense-built landscape.

While the other jets needed a kind of runway, the Harriers could be hidden almost EVERYwhere.

Even your radar wouldn't help you much.

I read, that the Israeli pilots sorted out the real Aegyptian jets from the fake dummies by simply using radar vision.

But when you have cars, trucks, oil-tanks, power-masts and god-knows-what spread out quite closely over

a landscape, I guess it wouldn't help you much at all.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Olham

[Flyby PC 23]

Funny what you say about models Olham. I felt the same way about a big Me110 I had. It was 1:32 scale as I recall, and big enough to get electric motors into the engine nacelles. Not brilliantly done, but worked for a while. The model had the big radar antennae too and just looked both elegant and mean at the same time.

I never got the big Mosquito I wanted. I always loved the Mossie, but it was so neat the model would get built in 5 minutes. It was too 'clean', and a bit boring because all the RAF aircraft were much the same colours.

I only got the WWI bug later on, but always had a soft spot for a 110. Once I got older and started to read more, the Mosquito took over as a firm favourite. Can't remember the book, but the little Mossie had a bigger punch the early B17, and flew faster and higher than a Spitfire.

[Baldric 42]

Love this discussion :) First plastic model for me was a Starfighter my father built for me (I think it was 1/48th scale) back in 1967. When I was able to do them myself it was usually Airfix 1/72nd scale. I loved the WWI models except for having the odd trouble with the wings and using black thread for the wires was a pain. I also built a bunch of Revell 1/32nd machines but mainly WWII. Best bit was going to airshows and military airshows and being able to recognize real aircraft from some of the models I had built. My love of flying comes from my grandfather, who was a bush pilot, and later a fighter pilot in WWII. I fly vicariously via sims as being a military pilot was not an option when I got out of high school (so joined the infantry instead) and over the years my career has been in public service so learning to fly has a financial barrier. WOFF (and other flight sims) is/are my current way of indulging in my passion ^.^

 

Kind regards,

Dave

[Hauksbee 103]

So I went home and made my mum lend me the money (I had to pay

it back over many weeks); and then I went back and bought the two models and carefully

carried them home.

Good story. And I'm glad to see it had a happy ending. When I was a kid, shortly after WWII, there were a lot of models of German airplanes molded in a hard black rubber. They were used in aircraft identification classes for gunners in bombers. Being flat black, the model was always seen in sillouette. I coveted them greatly every time I saw one, but I never succeeded in owning one.

[Olham 164]

Thank you all for your own "youth & model" stories!

Hauksbee, there must have been many of those black rubber models - I wonder

how they were exactly called - maybe you could search for them in the web?

There must still be some of them "alive"?

[HumanDrone 4]

Wow, what a delightful stroll down memory lane!  Thanks for all the great stories! 

 

Here's some of mine:  I wanted to be a pilot from an early age.  When I was 3 or 4 years old we went to the airport to see my grandmother off in a Lockheed Constellation.  That was back in the days of outdoor "observation decks" at the airports.  The 4 engines would start, with that marvelous burst of smoke and flame, and as it turned away from you to taxi, the prop wash, hot and reeking of fuel, would blow over you, and it was great.  I would run up and down the hall at home with both arms spinning like propellers.  I even had a toy airport, and when I got old enough for a bicycle, when the other boys were pretending they had motor cycles or race cars, mine was a "P51-D Mustang" (always said in full). I even copped a set of decals from a model and festooned the bike with them.

 

I built models, almost always airplanes - my beloved P51, some WWI (after learning about Eddie Rickenbacker), a Lancaster "Dam Buster", a Bf-110 with all those antennas, even a 1/72nd scale B52, which hung from my ceiling.  And for the moon landing, I was almost 14, and had built the 1/100th Saturn V from Revell (36.5 in tall, almost a full meter for you metric types!), and also their large scale Command/Service Module and Lunar Module, and I simulated every stage of the trip as it happened.  And I did the model rockets,too; by the time I was a senior in high school, i was designing my own, juicing them up for greater altitude.

 

By the time I got out of high school, my parents had split in an awful divorce that pretty much left us destitute.  But I'd been in Air Force Junior ROTC, and had secured a full 4 year scholarship with a guaranteed slot in pilot training.  Too bad that I was a little too close to home, and lacking significantly in maturity - I ended up dropping out of school and resigning the scholarship to get married two years later.  Now we have been visited by Grace and we'll celebrate our 40^th anniversary next year, but suffice to say that I too fly vicariously  (and as a passenger, for business, quite a bit!).

 

But back to the models, in my junior year of high school someone gifted me with an airbrush and compressor.  This kicked my modelling to a new level and I turned out some really beautiful aircraft - an F-111  Aardvark that I'd seen at Nellis AFB (and I got to spend some time in the simulator, too!), which looked (with aftermarket decals and setting solutions), well, if I do say so myself, like the real deal- no ugly decal outlines!  And when I began dating my beloved, with us still thinking I'd be a pilot, I customized a Northrup T-38 "Talon" and created a diorama with her standing next to the plane and me in the cockpit, canopy raised, arms uplifted in victory after my first supersonic solo - even had the oxygen mask dangling from the helmet, a pretty good trick in 1/72nd scale!  Crazy that a few short months later I'd be scratching out a living as a newlywed - we both look back and just shake our heads at our immaturity.  But it's all good; we raised 5 wonderful kids and I eventually got to finish my degree (the hard way, but I've gone on enough).

 

I really only came to deeply appreciate WWI in the last few years as I guess I finally lost some of that youthful bravado and began to really consider what guts t took to do what these men did - some of those crates don't look much more substantial than "Lawn Chair Larry" and his weather balloons, and they have these beauties up 15,000 ft - good night!

 

You get older and you think of those things - when I was younger I surely wanted to go into space, but then as I was headed up the Florida coast once, at 35,000 ft, I looked down and saw the humongous Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral -and it was so small!  And Shuttle launch pad, barely visible... and then I look up into that deep and infinite blue and realize what incredible courage and resolve a body must have -especially the first ones.  And heading for the moon, three guys in that cramped little command module, so very far from every other living thing.  Think of it!  And then you're on the surface of the moon in a craft that so small that it requires you to stand beside your fellow astronaut!  The upper stage is hardly bigger than a bathroom, and yet you will fly back into lunar orbit in that beauty!

 

Well, life is crazy and I barely have time to fly, but I hope you all enjoyed this as I enjoyed yours.  My current lair holds a number of die-cast aircraft, and a balsa-and-tissue Bf109 with the markings of Franz Stigler  (all I did was the airbrushing).  I have my Snoopy WWI Flying ace montage, aircraft instrument coasters, that clock that looks like an altimeter, and always a vintage military aviation calendar, but several plastic kits languish in the workshop.  Maybe someday...

 

Thanks again to all for the great stories!

 

Tom

Edited March 15, 2014 by HumanDrone

[Baldric 42]

Thoroughly enjoyed that Tom, thanks! It's pretty neat to see the similarities amongst us. Mercury and Apollo programs were avidly followed by me with Mom baking 'moon cookies' for launches hehe. The imagery in the first post reminded me of some of the comic book art from back in the day too, like Weird War Tales, which sometimes included a WWI air story if I recall right.

 

Kind regards,

Dave

[JimAttrill 24]

I am really enjoying this thread (though it doesn't have a lot to do with OFF/WOFF). 

Two points: one is that the famous RN test pilot Eric Brown did not think that the Me110 was a failure at all.  He rates it highly, certainly better than the Me's that were to follow apart from the 262.

See his book "Wings of the Luftwaffe" - I managed to get a second-hand copy from Amazon in the US which turned out to be an ex-library book from Oregon!  If you want to know what it was to fly just about all WWII Luftwaffe aircraft this is the book to get.  He also hid the fact for years that he actually flew a Me163 under rocket power and not just as a glider. 

Have any of you seen "Danny Deckchair" which is a sort of take on Lawn Chair Larry.  I downloaded it from Piratebay and it is quite funny, though not realistic of course. 

[Olham 164]

The 4 engines would start, with that marvelous burst of smoke and flame, and as it turned away from you to taxi, the prop wash, hot and reeking of fuel, would blow over you, and it was great. 

I would run up and down the hall at home with both arms spinning like propellers.  I even had a toy airport, and when I got old enough for a bicycle, when the other boys were pretending they

had motor cycles or race cars, mine was a "P51-D Mustang" (always said in full). I even copped a set of decals from a model and festooned the bike with them.

 

Was that the "Super Constellation", Tom? That must have been the most beautiful passenger airliner ever built IMHO.

Damn, yeah, childhood - how fresh some of it still is...

Must be, because the hard disc was all new, and nothing yet overwritten or deleted...

Thank you for your great story, Tom!

 

Baldric said: It's pretty neat to see the similarities amongst us. Mercury and Apollo programs were avidly followed by me with Mom baking 'moon cookies' for launches hehe.

 

Those NASA programs were watched all over the world, I guess - at least I did.

and I was drawing lots of astronauts, or later I did all the Apollo mission emblems in colour.

[JimAttrill 24]

But according to the Chinese it was all a movie set.  Come to think of it there was a movie with a similar theme.  On that subject I still love the movie about Apollo 13.  I am not supersticious and I wonder about the number 13.  Many hotels do not have 13th floor .  But they got back.  I do remember sending wishes up into the sky for them to survive.  And they did

[Olham 164]

There is a great 'mockumentary' about the moon landing being a fake - "Dark Side of the Moon".

The director made it with interview snippets he presented in wrong context, and even with the

real Henry Kissinger, a real general, and the real wife of Stanley Kubrick (he directed the film

"2001 A Space Odyssee" and was said to have made the moon landing fake).

 

When I saw it first, I took it for real - until, in the end titles - they unveil that it was all just a big fake

to show the people, how easy it is to make you believe in conspiracy theories.

 

When you get the chance to see this - watch it; it's brilliant.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_%28film%29

[Flyby PC 23]

Nearly every kid I knew had two things: One was a model of the Eagle, and the other was the Dinky Shadow Missile vehicle. It had a button that flipped over the ceiling and up popped the missile launcher, but obviously the missile was invariably lost, and the tracks too. If you didn't stand on somebody's Lego, sooner or later you'd stand on their Shadow Missile Vehicle.

 

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=shadow+missile+vehicle+dinky&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz35

 

 

Here's vid too: Complete with missing missile.

Edited March 15, 2014 by Flyby PC

[HumanDrone 4]

Fantastic!  I recall that the oldest fellow in the US was invited to the Apollo 11 moon launch.  He wa a dear old black gentleman, and he did NOT believe they were going to the moon.

 

Speaking with Wlater Cronkite, he was emphatic:  "I can see they're goin' somewhere!" he said, "But they ain't goin' to no Moon!"

 

Yeah, Baldric, sounds like you me and Olham are around the same age.  But I didn't get any moon cookies!  But Mercury, Gemini, Apollo - those were the days!

 

& Thanks Olham (it was the Super Connie, in that beautiful TWA livery), and everyone.  It's great sharing stories and memories.

 

Tom