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I'd be delighted at evidence posted to the contrary (this is a learning thread for sure) but I think I recall from some biography or other that firing upward with a Lewis had so small a chance of successfully hitting the target that pilots rarely bothered, even with the Foster mount. I know Lanoe Hawker invented a very 'hush-hush' sight that would allow accurate upward firing with a Lewis from the flexible mount on a DH2, but since no such sight appeared on later machines thus or similarly equipped I surmise that the facility wasn't explored in earnest. As I say though, great if someone can correct me on that.

I think Pol did hint that it might be possible, for a very limited number... in Phase 5 maybe. But then he said he was joking. I didn't believe him, because I know that if these guys could do it they would. They'd like to have authentic airfield layouts in OFF as much as we would.

I was looking for some information on Navarre's red Nieuport 11 and came across this in a thread on The Aerodrome "... some Nieuport aircraft were fit with the Alkan system (apparently also referred to as the Alkan-Hamy gear) which incorporated a fixed Lewis gun on the forward fuselage synchronized by an engine controlled cam. The device was designed by a mechanic of the name Alkan serving with MS 12. As with other contemporary systems reliability was a concern and, apparently, problems and accidents encountered led the R.F.C. to favor the Foster mounting with the weapon firing over the propeller." Link: http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/aircraft/34761-french-nieuport-11-fighters.html Incidentally, the Morane Saulnier Type I was also fitted with the Alkan synchroniser but it used a Vickers instead of the Lewis. Only four were delivered to the RFC though, the remainder serving on the Russion front.

I've been browsing off-and-on for details of the work WW1 ground crew would routinely carry out on an aircraft and how long it took them then thought 'Jeez, never mind th internet... one of the best WW1 information sources is the one I visit every day' so, can anyone tell me the typical work carried out daily on a WW1 aircraft, what they entailed,how it varied between types and how long it took on average? I suspect that groundcrew in WW1 as in WW2 were something of unsung heroes and if anyone has information to corroborate or otherwise I'd be interested to hear it and I daresay others would.

@ Steve - Thanks for that. I've ordered a copy of Naval 8 from Amazon... was on my wish list anyway. @ Lou - You're a marvel! Where did you come by those? Looking at them more closely I'm rather daunted. Can one employ riggers these days? If not, then, much as I like the lines of the SE5a maybe if that special day comes I'll get a replica Tripe instead - in honour both of my favourite machine in OFF and those gallant RNAS fellows. Heh, and thsnks to Flyby I now have the (obviously erroneous) vision of Jasta 11 as a troupe of wandering minstrels, their brightly coloured caravans packed with spare wings and canvas hangers toiling through the mud whilst the pilots idly strum their lutes and sing ribald ditties about the local ladies of the night.

All thanks to Wikipaedia. I was a little over-zealous in my cutting and pasting but as Lou hasn't said whether edits are allowed I've not taken out the spurious content. Besides, it takes three minutes to open anything on this forum when I'm in the office. Funny you should ask about the avatar, I was planning on changing it this evening.

Firewall a little more forgiving today... fingers crossed.... Bonus pic is the cockpit of a Vicker Vimy bomber. The Vickers Vimy was a British heavy bomber aircraft of the First World War and post-First World War era. It achieved success as both a military and civil aircraft, setting several notable records in long-distance flights in the interwar period, the most celebrated of which was the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by Alcock and Brown in June 1919. Design and development Reginald Kirshaw "Rex" Pierson, chief designer of Vickers Limited (Aviation Department) in Leighton Buzzard, designed a twin-engine biplane bomber, the Vickers F.B.27 to meet a requirement for a night bomber capable of attacking targets in Germany, a contract being placed for three prototypes on 14 August 1917. Design and production of the prototypes was extremely rapid, with the first flying on 30 November 1917, powered by two 200 hp (150 kW) Hispano Suiza engines. It was named after the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Owing to engine supply difficulties, the prototype Vimys were tested with a number of different engine types, including Sunbeam Maoris, Salmson 9Zm water cooled radials, and Fiat A.12bis engines, before production orders were placed for aircraft powered by the 230 hp (170 kW) BHP Puma, 400 hp (300 kW) Fiat, 400 hp (300 kW) Liberty L-12 and the 360 hp (270 kW) Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engines, with a total of 776 ordered before the end of the First World War. Of these, only aircraft powered by the Eagle engine, known as the Vimy IV, were delivered to the RAF. RAF service By October 1918, only three aircraft had been delivered to the Royal Air Force, one of which had been deployed to France for use by the Independent Air Force. The war ended, however, before it could be used on operations. The Vimy only reached full service status in July 1919 when it entered service with 58 Squadron in Egypt. The aircraft formed the main heavy bomber force of the RAF for much of the 1920s. The Vimy served as a front line bomber in the Middle East and in the United Kingdom from 1919 until 1925, when it was replaced by the Vickers Virginia, but continued to equip a Special Reserve bomber squadron, 502 Squadron at Aldergrove in Northern Ireland until 1929. The Vimy continued in use as a training aircraft, many being re-engined with Bristol Jupiter or Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar radial engines. The final Vimys, used as Target aircraft for searchlight crews remained in use until 1938. Specifications (Vimy) General characteristics * Length: 43 ft 7 in (13.28 m) * Wingspan: 68 ft 1 in (20.75 m) * Height: 15 ft 8 in (4.77 m) * Wing area: 1,330 ft² (123.56 m²) * Empty weight: 7,104 lb (3,222 kg) * Max takeoff weight: 10,884 lb (4,937 kg) * Powerplant: 2× Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII, 360 hp (268.45 kW) each Performance * Maximum speed: 100 mph (161 km/h) * Range: 900 mi (1,448 km) * Service ceiling: 7,000 ft (2,134 m) * Power/mass: 0.07 hp/lb (0.11 kW/kg) Armament * 1 × .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis Gun in Scarff ring in nose and 1 × in Scarff ring in mid-fuselage * 2,476 lb (1,123 kg) of bombs Source: Wikipaedia [EDIT] Removed spurious content (Wiki tags etc.) and added Source attribution [/EDIT]

Lou, don't change anything on my account. It's worked out fine for the most part. Yesterday was a bit frustrating is all, but I don't think I'd have picked any points up anyhow so no matter.

Thanks Lou. If you look (alright, peer) at the attached you'll see some proof of that statement. Entente aerodromes are red, Central Powers are blue, those that 'swapped hands' are purple. I've mapped into Google Earth all the aerodromes for which Shredward kindly gave me coordinates and am gradually bringing the trench maps in as overlays. I wonder if the number of aerodromes you see here really constitutes 'many' from an airman's point of view. If not, then some aerodromes for which the coordinates are not yet known may have been here... which overlaying trench maps may yet show

That's the point, I'd hazard, that getting to the bottom of would yield interesting information. If one allows that the 'drome was to the right as all the evidence indicates AND one allows that Schobinger remembered accurately... then which way did he walk? Answer that and one can truly step in his footsteps, and those of MvR and many others. Good to hear from you again JFM. Your posts here (or on the CK site) are never less than richly informative.

Alas, I can only say 'very shortly after I win the lottery'. A man's gotta have dreams though, right?

Yep, 'grats to all, including you Olham. Grr. I hate it when Lou posts a new batch while I'm in the office... our work firewall is so fussy I can barely access this thread... takes ages. Ah, well. 'Swings and roundabouts' as we say in these parts, I'm damned certain I've been fortunate with the timing some of my answers otherwise... may the best man win!

Cheers Lou, that link may well come in handy when I finally get my replica SE5a! I should have added that I'm interested in the matter from the German side too, so if Olham or anyone else has information or similar links to German sources I'd appreciate the input.

My bad. I was thinking of the Fokker DVII skins. I was having the same problem with the backplate trying to skin Sachsenburg's late war black and yellow diamond-checkered DVII. This beastie:

All those ladies are all very nice indeed... but my mouth is watering too over the prosciutto, not to mention the wine and the grappa! I'm off to the travel agents to prepare my itinerary... to include Dalmatia... now, how can I swing it on expenses... hmmm? :scratch_one-s_head: Thanks Creaghorn.

I'm just reading Flying Fury again myself. In my copy, on page 226 McCudden refers to "Havrincourt Wood, familiarly refrerred to as 'Mossyface'" and I was reminded of this query of Quoth's. I looked on McMasters and Havrincourt Wood certainly existed and was mapped. Then I checked on Google Earth and it's relatively unchanged. Can't quite see immediately why it should have acquired the name 'Mossyface' but maybe from a different angle... Illustration below, trench map section from November '17 and Goggle Earth 2009...

That is indeed true and when the surface in question tapers, as most fuselages do, then the distortion is inconstant. Thus, though the back plate is represented rectangularly on the skin what is actually used on the model is a section of that rectangle. The challenge is finding which is the section and how much distortion to apply to the skin in order to compensate for the inconstant distortion of the tapering surface.

It does, it means 'Hail!' as German 'Heil!' From the poem 'Christ' by the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, found in the Exeter Book... "Eala Earendel, engla beorhtast, ofer middangeard monnum sended, ond soðfæsta sunnan leoma, torht ofer tunglas, þu tida gehwane of sylfum þe symle inlihtes!" "Hail Earendel, brightest of angels, over middle-earth sent to men, and the sun's radiance of truth, of brilliance exceeding the stars, you each season by yourself illuminate!" And therein the inspiration for Tolkien's hero, Eärendil the Mariner, in the Silmarillion Anyway, back to topic, wishing you luck with that backplate Olham... you could leave it as default plywood without it looking any the poorer.

Here's a very interesting site on the construction of a replica Morane Saulnier L: Morane Saulnier L Replica ... it's in Dutch but online translation engines will cope and there are some fabulous photos.

'Fraid not. It's one of the omissions from CFS3 that many here really regret, as OFF can be so awesome it'd be great to be able to view great moments over and over from different angles etc. FRAPS is the best you can do for replays. I doubt it's anything the dev team can rectify either, as it's the fault of CFS3, not OFF.

Sorry to do this to you Rickitycrate, but #21 is a Hansa-Brandenburg D1 'Star-Strutter'. It's not a seaplane. The original image is: The aircraft was developed in Germany by Ernst Heinkel and was built in Austria-Hungary by companies Phönix Flugzeug-Werke AG and Ungarische Flugzeugfabrik AG. It was manufactured in 2 versions (depending on motor used). The D1 was not very stable in flight and the pilot had a limited field of vision. Its commissioning in autumn 1916 was accompanied by many accidents, which earned it the nickname "coffin". This did not prevent the the Austro-Hungarian airforce using the aircraft in large numbers until mid-1917.

Well Steve, if you do get to have a word in Peter's shell-like, tell him he's beholden by the memory of Messrs' Little, Dallas and all the rest of the antipodean airmen of The Great War to make their equivalent of the recent Canadian 'Passchendaele'. Be great to have the RNAS feature prominently... in memory of Henry Allingham too.

Lou, Here's what I'd have posted if Red-Dog hadn't the correct answer. I too found indications of the first batch of S-16s being two-seaters. Three two-seat S-16s were built as trainers for bomber crews of the Squadron of Flying Ships in 1915, followed by about twenty-four more as two-seat S-16-2 and single-seat S-16-3 bomber escort and reconnaissance scouts with 80hp Gnome engines in 1916-17. A machine-gun was mounted under the top wing, firing clear of the propeller, until Engineer Lavrov invented an interrupter gear for a fuselage-mounted gun. For winter operation, a number of S-16s were flown on skis in place of the standard four-wheel landing gear; at least one was fitted with twin floats in 1916. Contemporary accounts show that pilots enjoyed the stability, manoeuvrability and delicate controls of the S-16s, but they were outclassed by German fighters of the time. Source: http://aviastar.org/air/russia/sik_s-16.php Type: Fighter Scout Year: 1915 Engine: 1 x "Gnome" 80 hrs.pwr. Wingspan: 8.00 m Length: 5.90 m Weight: 407 kg/675 kg Max. speed: 120 km/h Ceiling : 3500 m Crew: 1 Armament: 1 machinegun Source: http://www.wwiaviation.com/russia1915.html

Nice one, Hellshade. Out-doing Bob Little you were there... excepting the two guns, of course.

HomeBoy made a video of a hammerhead turn in OFF, which I found helpful...