Dej

Excellent work chaps! Well done Red-Dog. This 'leopard' wasn't paying attention. The gap's closing... I predict an exciting finish

Sebastian Festner, eh? Not only did he fly with the Baron, Festner also flew an all-red Albatros, seemingly. Here's his link at The Aerodrome ... very 'natural' and 'unposed' looking photograph there. Any additional 'family' information you can share with us DIVEGUY43 we'd all be agog to hear it. Welcome to OFF.

Could be the MIPMAP settings. I have mine dialled up for quality and NOT application controlled. Try fiddling about with those. And do you get the same problems with a stock skin?

Blimey, Rikitycrate... you da man! Whilst I was exercising my ignorance looking for this I came across this awesome RC SE5 build. I'm linking it here because there's some interesting information on weathering of use to the skinners here at the OFF forums... one of whom has been known to frequent this thread

Hah! Made you look, didn't I? You can calm down now... you didn't miss one. Sorry, couldn't resist it, call me puerile if you will. (Lou will probably disqualify me now )

The very point I was about to add. I'm sure our British 'higher-ups', not to mention the Germans themselves, would take a very dim view of compromising Danish neutrality. Better keep this one 'under wraps'... you'll get a gong no doubt, but not until the war's over.

And some very nice pictures for the album too. Good job you had your camera with you.

If you go to the Aces section of that excellent resource The Aerodrome at www.theaerodrome.com and navigate to ace's page (by name, by nation, by cemetery or whatever) you will find the names of any enemy aces downed, directly above your subject ace's list of victories, along with which number victory the enemy ace was, e.g. for the example of J. O. Andrews click here Interestingly, Allmenroeder is not so listed on Collishaw's page, probably because it's not certain whether it was Collishaw or another of the Black Flight... it was a 'hit and run attack', after all. Olham, Albert Ball only 'disappeared' from view of his flight. He was wont go go off on his own anyway. His SE5 was seen by a german officer on the ground coming inverted out of a cloud, with a dead prop, shortly before crashing. His body was recovered by the Germans and buried. Ball's father later bought the land where his son crashed and set up two stones, marking the nose and tail of the crashed SE. Only one remains and it's not know which end. Check the info here. The only mystery is why he crashed, as he was not wounded. 'Disorientation in cloud' is the likeliest cause.

Thanks Red-Dog, and you've done well yourself. For my part I've had a bit of luck in that in about three cases (RE8, Hansa-Brandenburg and Zeppelin-Straaken cockpit, IIRC) I'd only recently seen the very photo Lou used. Olham's the man to admire. I've almost resorted to a thesaurus in some of the pesky paper chases Lou's had us doing on the Web, and English is my native language. I know Olham's English is extremely good but I still say, without meaning to be condescending at all, that 20 points of his are worth 24 of mine.

#33 is a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter The Sopwith 1½ Strutter was a British one or two-seat biplane multi-role aircraft It is significant as the first British-designed two seater tractor fighter, and the first British aircraft to enter service with a synchronised machine gun. It also saw widespread but rather undistinguished service with the French Aéronautique Militaire. Designed by the Sopwith Aviation Company, originally for service with the Royal Naval Air Service, (Yay!) the 1½ Strutter was so nicknamed because each of the upper wings (there was no true centre section) were connected to the fuselage by a pair of short (half) struts and a pair of longer struts, forming a "W" when viewed from the front. The aircraft had airbrakes on the lower wings and was powered by a 130-hp (97 kW) Clerget rotary engine. The main armament was one fixed .303-in Vickers machine gun and up to four 56 lb (25 kg) bombs. In the two-seat version, the observer was armed with a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring mount. In December 1915, the Vickers-Challenger interrupter gear was put into production for the Royal Flying Corps and in a few weeks a similar order for the Scarff-Dibovski gear was placed for the RNAS. These gears were fitted to early 1½ Strutters until it was possible to standardise on the improved Ross gear, although the Sopwith-Kauper gear was also used. None of these early mechanical synchronisation gears were very reliable and it was not uncommon for propellers to be damaged, or even entirely shot away. Some early production aircraft were initially built without the forward firing gun because Vickers guns, as well as the necessary synchronisation gears, were in short supply. The Scarff ring mounting was also very new, and production was at first slower than that of the aircraft requiring them. Various makeshift Lewis mountings, as well as the older Nieuport ring mounting, were fitted to some early 1½ Strutters as an interim measure. The prototype two-seater flew in December 1915 and production deliveries started to reach the RNAS in February 1916. By the end of April, No. 5 Wing RNAS had a complete flight of the new aircraft, using them both to escort the Wing's Caudron G.4 and Breguet bombers and to carry out bombing raids themselves.[3][4] The War Office had ordered the type for the RFC at the same time, but because Sopwiths were contracted to the Navy for their entire production, the RFC orders had to be placed with Ruston Proctor and Vickers, and production from these manufacturers did not get into its stride until August. Since the Somme offensive was planned for the end of June, and the type was far more urgently required by the RFC than by the RNAS the situation was clearly farcical, and in the event some aircraft had to be transferred from one service to the other - allowing No. 70 squadron to reach the front by early July 1916, with Sopwith-built Strutters originally intended for the navy. At first No. 70 did very well with their new mounts. The period of German ascendency known as the Fokker scourge was long over, and the 1½ Strutter's long range, coupled with its excellent armament for the period, enabled effective offensive patrolling deep into German held territory. Unfortunately, by the time No. 45 Squadron reached the front in October the new Albatros fighters were appearing in the Jagdstaffeln. By January 1917, when No 43 Squadron arrived in France, the type was totally outclassed as a fighter; although it was still a useful long-range reconnaissance aircraft. Like most early Sopwith types, the 1½ Strutter was very lightly built, and its structure did not stand up very well to arduous war service. It was also far too stable to make a good dogfighter. The last front line 1½ Strutters in the RFC were replaced by Camels in late October 1917. Source: Wikipaedia Sorry, went for the easy one... busy day.

That's true, but then you add in the avenues, the burial mounds, the other henges, Silbury Hill etc. and get your head around the sheer size of Salisbury Plain's truly ancient status as a sacred site... quickly puts the awe back.

The attached may interest you, Lou. This is reference to a Pup with a Constantinesco Interrupter, in the Windsock Datafile 002, p13. Doesn't make any difference to the incorrectness of my answer, of course, but thought you'd like to see it. Of course, the editor could have got it wrong.

I think the scale may be a bit off! It's certainly not surrounded by trees either, not now nor during The Great War.

Heh! Oh dear. What a waste. Note to self... read the other chuffin' posts!

Well, it's definitely a Sopwith Pup had that straight off as I've seen the photo only recently. Don't know what the gauge is but I'm going to bet my points on it being a pressure gauge for the Constantinesco hydraulic interrupter, as I believe the pump for said device is on the port side of the cockpit.

I've noticed your posts on that before and have been meaning to try it. Is yours an analogue joypad? Mine is digital (and has been gathering dust in consequence).

Bit of extraneous info 'cos this is cool... The Scarff ring was a type of machine gun mounting developed during the First World War by Warrant Officer (Gunner) F. W. Scarff of the Admiralty Air Department - for use on two-seater aircraft. The mount incorporated bungee cord suspension in elevation to compensate for the weight of the gun(s) that allowed an airgunner in an open cockpit to swivel and elevate his weapon (typically one or two Lewis machine guns) around and easily fire in any direction. It was simple, rugged, and gave its operator an excellent field of fire. It was widely adapted and copied for other airforces. As well as becoming a standard fitting in the British forces during the First World War, the Scarff ring was used in the post war Royal Air Force for many years - perhaps the last British aircraft to use the mounting being the Supermarine Walrus amphibian. Beautifully quirky aircraft, one of my favourites. Scarff was also involved in the development of the Scarff-Dibovsky interrupter gear. Although a deceptively simple device, later attempts to emulate the Scarff ring as a mounting for the dorsal Vickers K in World War II Handley Page Hampden was a failure. Handley Page had designed a carriage with ball-bearing wheels running on a track around the cockpit. Vibration when firing shook the balls out, jamming the mounting. LOL! In the 1930's the Germans developed a similar system called a Drehkranz D 30 (German: Turntable) used on a number of German aircraft, most notably the Junkers Ju 52 Now, if we could use a mouse with the guns in the Observer's position in OFF... we'd be closer to the real thing.

Righteous? Them is not 'righteous', them is 'badass', you know what I mean. WW1 street innit. WW2 Street: Please excuse the brief hijack.

I'm bringing in sections of the trench maps from the McMasters collection available online in the public domain at McMasters University. What I'm doing in detail is to take a screenshot of any part of a map that shows an aerodrome (mostly 1:20000 maps from 1918) and matching that to 'known' latitude and longitude co-ordinates of WW1 aerodromes. In a few cases so far I think I've grounds for correcting those co-ordinates. But I'm exploring possibilities with Shredward (whose knowledge I bow to) before I 'publish', so to speak.

Very good, Olham. #30 is a Zeppelin-Straaken cockpit. The Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI was a four-engined German biplane strategic bomber of World War I, and the only so-called Riesenflugzeug ("giant aircraft") design built in any quantity. The R.VI was the most numerous of the R-bombers built by Germany, and also one of the first closed-cockpit military aircraft (but the first was Russian aircraft Sikorsky Ilya Muromets) as Red-Dog would point out. The bomber was reputedly the largest wooden aircraft ever built until the advent of the Hughes H-4 Hercules built by Howard Hughes, its wingspan of 138 feet 5.5 inches (42.2 m) nearly equaling that of the World War II B-29 Superfortress. General characteristics * Crew: Seven (commander, pilot, copilot, radio operator, and fuel attendant in the cockpit, one mechanic in each engine nacelle) * Length: 76 ft 1 in (22.1 m) * Wingspan: 138 ft 5.5 in (42.2 m) * Height: 20 ft 8 in (6.3 m) * Wing area: 3573.6 ft² (332 m²) Performance * Maximum speed: 83.9 mph (135 km/h) * Range: 500 mi (800 km) * Service ceiling: 14,173 ft (4,320 m) * Rate of climb: 350 ft/min (101 m/min) Armament * Guns: Up to 5 machine guns of varying types * Bombs: 4,409 lbs (2,000 kg) of bombs * Empty weight: 17,463 lb (7,921 kg) * Loaded weight: 26,120 lb (11,848 kg) * Powerplant: 4 (2 pusher and 2 tractor)× Mercedes D.IVa or Maybach Mb.IVa, 260 hp [3] (190 kW) each Interesting Wikipaedia bit... Discovered crash site Very little remains of these giant bombers, although nearly a century after the end of World War I amateur historians of the "Poelcapelle 1917 Association vzw" working in Poelkapelle, northeast of Ypres, identified a wreck that was found in 1981 by Daniel Parrein, a local farmer who was plowing his land. For a while it was thought that the wreck was that of French ace Georges Guynemer's plane; however that was discounted when repair tools were found at the site, and further research pointed that the engine was a Mercedes D.IVa, possibly of a Gotha G bomber. A comparison of recovered parts was inconclusive, since the parts were common to a number of aircraft other than the Gotha G. In 2007 the researchers, Piet Steen with some help of Johan Vanbeselaere, finally made a conclusive ID after visiting one of the very few partial specimens (the distinctive engine nacelles) in a Krakow air museum. With the help of the Polish aviation historians, parts were identified as those of Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI R.34/16, which crashed on 21 April 1918 after a mission against the British Royal Flying Corps field at St. Omer, France. The R.VI was shot down, apparently by anti-aircraft fire of the British 2nd Army, while trying to cross the front line, killing all seven crew members. [EDIT] Bad cut & paste, sorry [/EDIT]

Yay! Well, indeed you have Olham. That was a toughie.

I'm not interested in points now either I just want someone to find it so that I know what it is. To that end, I think it is some form of airborne gun-laying solution generator, used for co-ordinating indirect artillery fire. If I'm correct (or close) maybe that'll help one of the other find the damn thing! Oh, and Jim... you meant one of these:

Colourful collection of Razors you got there OvS. Brilliant work. I think some of our die-hard Darkside players who are determined to get to 1918 'the hard way' may be persuaded to 'cheat' by these.

Dream on.... please Father Christmas... I've been very very good.

I've been looking for this off and on all day... and I'm still none the wiser. Can safely say though that if I never see anything to do with WW1 wireless telegraphy again... it'll be too soon!